The Scribbling Novelist: Freedom of Mind

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Freedom of Mind

I wrote a short story today.

Let me repeat that: I wrote a short story today!

It's currently 12 pages--which is SUPER short for me actually. And the best news: I'm actually really excited about it. Last night I went to a Poker-turned-Dance-Party get together, which was a lot of fun. I didn't dance (no surprise really), but I did get to talking with some of the girls in my program. I told them all about my fears, insecurities, etc., and we just sat around talking about things. It really helped to just hear them giving ideas and sharing their own fears (it always feels good to hear that other people are struggling a little too). But it was actually conversation with this guy, a current (almost finished) fiction student for me to see the light. I asked him in he missed workshoping and being in classes since he's currently working on his thesis and he said no. He talked about the pressure of writing for someone (peers, workshopers) versus writing for himself or for his intended audience. He found himself writing stories with people in his workshops in mind--thinking about what they'd appreciate or enjoy. I realized that I don't want to do that. I realized that I've been stumped with my writing because of this very fact--because I don't want to change my current writing style to appease my classmates. I just want to write what I am close to. So, I ditched my planned story and have spent the past five hours working on something new--a solid draft that will be pretty good by the time I finish it tomorrow.

I am happy. Story is posted here (leave a review so I know what you think!).

1 comment:

Unknown said...: WONDERFUL!

I haven't done any new writing, but I have done a bit of editing on a story started this summer. I frequently find myself incapable of writing to specific peers (when I try I get frustrated and just turn in an amalgom to "fill the hole" where my story should have been), although, now that "writing to the workshop" has been articulated and identified as a fear and pressure I'll have to agree. I feel that fear/pressure/need to "write to the workshop" even if I frequently cannot meet it as an expectation.; September 14, 2008 at 7:59 PM

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To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all. ~Lord Byron

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You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. ~Ray Bradbury

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I write to discover what I think. ~Joan Didion

What is The Subconscious to every other man, in its creative aspect becomes, for writers, The Muse. ~Ray Bradbury

I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions. ~James Michener

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public. ~Winston Churchill

Writing is one of the few professions in which you can psychoanalyze yourself, get rid of hostilities and frustrations in public, and get paid for it. ~Octavia Butler

Writers aren't exactly people.... they're a whole bunch of people trying to be one person. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald

All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind. ~Kahlil Gibran

Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use. ~Ernest Hemingway

From "Byron" a BBC movie: Shelley to Byron:
"What makes you write?" Byron to Shelley: "My inability to prevent it."

Real writers can't sleep because there are stories batting around inside their heads. Real writers create characters they weep over, because they are so real. Real writers can't NOT write. I think you can make a person a better writer technically by having him/her attend workshops and creative writing programs… but I think that at the basal level, writers are born, not made. ~ Jodi Picoult

A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket. ~Charles Peguy

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. ~William Wordsworth

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne

I'd rather be caught holding up a bank than stealing so much as a two-word phrase from another writer. ~Jack Smith

You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what's burning inside you. And we edit to let the fire show through the smoke. ~Arthur Polotnik

Pen names are masks that allow us to unmask ourselves. ~C. Astrid Weber

Being an author is having angels whisper in your ear - and devils, too. ~Graycie Harmon

One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment. ~Hart Crane

Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will. ~Goethe

You see, in my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway. ~Junot Diaz