Learning to write

I have voiced my desire of completing either a course or a degree in creative writing to a number of people who have told me, with a dismissive wave of the hand, that I don't need to be taught and I should just write. Whereas I could take this as flattering I am actually a little frustrated as it implies writing is easy and all the writers out there do not work hard at their craft. For a craft it is.

Simply because we all use words in our everyday communications whether verbally or on screen/paper does not mean we are furnished with the skills to write a page-turning novel. Just as the majority of us live and work in buildings does not make us architects at the drop of a hard hat. The misconception that anyone can and should be published is arrogant, deluded nonsense. It takes great skill, a knowledge of the markets, your chosen genre, rules (publishers only like established authors to break these) and a hell of a lot of toil at the desk. This goes for non-fiction too. A seed of talent helps, but this can remain latent if not nurtured in a nourishing environment.

Yes, it is a craft. As with any other, you need to master the techniques. No one scoffs at art school, engineering, dance or woodwork students. You can't approach a pile of wood without knowing what you're doing and start sawing and hammering to build a wardrobe. It's the same with a blank page and the words in your head. Yes, novelists make it seem easy. Their words flow seamlessly from paragraph to paragraph, you barely notice the structure, the narrative devices they employ to keep you turning that page. They have worked extremely hard, often for years, to reach that Holy Grail of a readable book. It was not dashed off after a rather inspiring episode of Deal or No Deal.

For example, Andrea Levy did not begin writing until her mid-thirties and in order to write well, she did creative writing courses. There is no shame in this. She studied her way to publication. Levy's work is astonishing in its depth, elegance and truth.

I want to master my craft. I want to be an accomplished writer. I want people to choose to read my work rather than the million other pressing things they have to do, the million other books available.  I am going to respect my readers' time and put the hours in myself to create a book worthy of it. To achieve this I am going to pour all my effort and energy into studying all I can about this art. I need feedback, criticism, practise and knowledge. I hope to achieve a standard in my work I can be proud of.

To write is to take readers on a journey. You need to be an experienced guide. You are navigating a path some may have never trod and you need to know how to keep them following you through to the end.

Questions for a fledgling writer who loves all forms and can't find where to seat herself and just write!

(This was a stream of consciousness piece from my Morning Pages)

Am I a novelist or a poet? Short fiction or non-fiction? Where do my skills lie? I'll never know until I try. Try a week concentrating on one, or a month. It's more than all you've ever done. Nothing to lose but something to gain so choose. Run with one for a while, don it as an outfit. Search the pockets, pull the threads. Make alterations. Dye it purple if it's red. Raise the hem. Change the buttons. See how each fits you truly, how smoothly your hand glides as you fill each sleeve. Try it in all weathers, not just your favourite or the most appropriate. Spill your lunch, your life, on it. Make it fit, and if it doesn't, try it on again at a later date when you've shed some pounds, those useless stories. It won't always be comfortable but it will always be yours.

What is your writer's outfit?

Is it made from maps, flowers, human hearts or history books? Is darkness woven in? Is it rough and modern or romantic and frivolous? Is it stitched with sci-fi or fantasy, a touch of Gothic horror at the collar? Do memory and madness shape the cut, the cuffs a touch philosophical, the lapels straight out of an Edwardian wardrobe? Are the pockets full of herbs or alien eyes or graveyard dirt or dragon teeth? Does the lining shimmer with fear, lust or mystery? Is the pattern drawn from heartache, humour or beauty? Is it elegant? Will it linger in the mind?

Design and craft your writer's outfit from the materials you obsess and yearn for, the memories you cherish or abhor, the fantasies that ribbon your consciousness. Cut it from a cloth of truth, well-worn. Wear it with conviction.

Wear it every day.

The Artist's Way

I have dug out my copy of Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way (TAW) again. I have lost count of the times I've attempted to complete this 12 week "course". Cameron says it is a spiritual journey to your creativity, or a creative journey to your spirituality and that the two cannot be separated anyway. However you view the All That Is, Higher Power, God/dess, Universe etc its entire purpose is The Creator and as we are a part of it, not a separate entity bobbing about in it, our base natures are creative also. We are creative beings, so stop saying you can't create and accept it (but she says it nicer, and more long-winded). I have looked for a mention of Dorothea Brande, crediting her for the origin of her Morning Pages but there's nothing in the actual body of the book. Cameron says she began them all by herself while on sabbatical in Mexico. Hmph. I checked the bibliography and she does list Becoming a Writer, saying it is the "best book on writing I have ever found." So that's good.

Last time I attempted TAW I signed the contract at the beginning of the book (in ink!) and was resolved to stick with it. That was 2007. I didn't stick with it. I don't think I've ever made it past Week One. I have no idea why, except life getting in the way and my commitment to my own creative happiness was weak. I even gave my copy away and it has found its way back to me.

I came across another book, Creating a Life Worth Living by Carol Lloyd, last year and a lot of the Amazon reviewers said they had struggled to finish The Artist's Way but this book they had managed to stick with, finding it more expansive and liberating and realistic.

I have CaLWL and started to work with it last year. I like her practical yet off-beat approach to building a creative life. So which do I follow? My creative nemesis that keeps clawing at my face, muttering about Morning Pages and Artist's Dates or a grounded, less bossy, romp to creative joy?

I just know I can't do it on my own! I need someone behind me with a giant whip! I'll never write if I don't focus.

Other things I need to sort out:

• My laptop is broken. I need to tell ASUS they suck and I need a new one, pronto. 
• I need to clear and organise my writing area
• I need to get on with reading the dictionary. I have also been doing this for Lord knows how many years and am not even a quarter way through the As yet. It is a task I have created for my own enjoyment (no seriously, this kind of stuff makes me hard) and part of it is to create my own mini dictionary of favourite words, which I have begun. I need to be more selective though because the A section is already quite big. 
• What, my friends, WHAT I am going to write. Which genre? And what form shall my writing take? I still don't know. I flit between novels, short stories and poems like a drunken bumble bee, occasionally alighting on the enticing bloom of non-fiction before despairing at my own ability to keep air-borne...aaaand the metaphor's over. 
• See? I need to practise! 

Write for Fifteen Minutes

The other daily task that Dorothea Brande's warning pertains to is to write for fifteen minutes at a set time every day. No matter what you're doing at that time, whether you're shopping, in full conversational flow or in the shed looking for the bloody secateurs again, you must stop and write for 15 minutes, about anything. This is also an exercise recommended by Natalie Goldberg in her wonderful book Writing Down the Bones.

My time I have picked is 1.15 pm. This is during Jingle's big daytime nap and usually she is asleep until 2pm. It's my time to eat, clean or read but writing is equally a priority. And fifteen minutes goes so fast when spent on the page.

This may seem like another obligation in an already restrictive routine but I can see how this rigidity will be good for me. And I need to just write. Not thinking or reading about writing, not agonising over an intricate plot line that never manifests but simple writing practice.

No critic, no perfection. Just the ink, the page and me.

Becoming a Writer

Dorothea Brande published Becoming a Writer in 1934. In it, she does not offer instruction on the writer's craft or tools of the trade but instead discusses the writer's inner life - their mind and heart. Her theory is that so many aspiring writers look to published authors as having cracked some sort of code or found a magic elixir and that is how they can call themselves a writer and work as one. She says this is codswallop, there is no magic ingredient, all you need is the discipline and focus to write every day and then you can go on to learn plotting, dialogue etc and be able to make use of the skills you learn. To do this, she says a writer must live as two people, splitting the self into the creative, unconscious-driven part and the out-in-the-world business-like part - the part that edits, rewrites and promotes the fruit of the creative's labours.

Her first task in order to "live as a writer" is to write every morning for as long as you can, preferably while still in bed. I am familiar with Julia Cameron's Morning Pages (writing three pages of unedited longhand after rising) from The Artist's Way and I am supposing that Cameron has lifted it from Brande. This proves that it must have some merit and use. I have attempted Morning Pages (as I will call them from now on) for so many years. I think the longest I stayed with them was two months or so. I have experienced benefit from them, but having not set out a time in the day to formally write I have not fully integrated the practice into my life. This I must do.

The first time I read Brande's book I was pleased with the familiar task and wrote upon waking for a good few weeks. But I didn't keep it up, and I didn't designate a set time of day to work on my "official" writing. I was pregnant at the time and other things took precedence eventually (namely sleep). But Brande gives a warning at the end of Chapter 6 that stops my heart and chills my blood!

'Right here I should like to sound the solemnest word of warning that you will find in this book: If you fail repeatedly at this exercise, give up writing. Your resistance is greater than your desire to write, and you may as well find some other outlet for your energy as of late.' -p79

While I agree that the resistance in the past was great than the desire, I have overcome these and now am locked-in, booted-up and ready to go. The thought of never writing, even though my writing life up to this point has been rather skeletal and dry, fills me with such panic, horror and dread for the future and it's all I can do not to throw the book across the room and howl in despair.

I love proving people wrong. I love doing the opposite of expectation. So Dorothea Brande can go whistle, because I can do as she asks and I will, one day, write fluently on demand as she promises.

The reason why I listen to this woman is because in the proceeding chapters before this heartless warning she writes lovingly of me. Me and my soul. Of the writer immobilised by fear, by self-consciousness, by embarrassment that one could perfect this craft and take on that lofty title of "writer". She knows what's in writers' hearts and yearning souls, and she offers reassurance and guidance.

So, Job One. Morning Pages. I'm on it.

Welcome and hello to none and all!

Third wave for this blog now and now it has a purpose, a directive, a sticker saying "this is what this is". I shall attempt to stay on track and not wander down mindless avenues for my own amusement but shall strive to blog only about my learningments in the writing arena, my actual scribblements (getting annoying yet?) and how life with a six year-old (Bingle) and an eight month-old (Jingle) are aiding/preventing me from writing.


My ambition is to enter a short story competition this year.


I have not written formally or even studied the necessary components of the writer's craft for so long that I am what you might call a little rusty. But this is where I dive in, just getting on with the job and not worrying about whether the job is perfect or not.


I am a writer, damn it, and I am writing. So, in conclusion: hurrah!

My Love Came Back Today

My love came back today
But not to me
My love has missed me
But not my body
He hasn’t ached for my smooth waist
Or tender fingers trailing
But he loves me just the same

My love returned today
But not to my embrace
My love knows I missed him
And is waiting for our lips to meet
Across the couch, sharing coffees
Not kisses

My love returned today
Completely his
I wouldn’t have him any other way

Life!

A snatched moment of internet time! Must write waffle on abandoned blog so everyone knows I'm still alive!

Hello?

Oh, well. Anyway, Tree is circling me like a magpie on a diamond so I have precious few moments to write something worth your mighty click.

*pressure*

*folds*

My plans for this blog is to mainly return to my booky witterings. As this is all I do. I need a focus and despite every interest known to man sparking flutterings in my breast, I shall focus on books and writing. I am enjoying filling in my Book Lust journal and seeing the amount of books I am ploughing through, and the wide variety. I've finally learned to stick with a book to the end, instead of dipping in and out of twenty at a time.

Hurrah!

Oh!

Finished Island of the Blue Dolphins yesterday. It's the kind of book you can return to year after year, it's so transporting. Beautifully simple, narrated so that you are instantly seeing the island and the world through Karana's eyes and thoughts. I found it so inspiring the way she teaches herself, and survives off her own courage and persistence. She adapts so well, finding enjoyment, friends, learning about the inherent love in animals, crafting things for necessity and pleasure. Makes plans, sometimes working through many seasons to see the fruits of her labours. No rush, no defeatism - just pure determination and inner-faith. A true heroine. I adore her.

I want to go first

I don't want to be left behind.

Isn't that the most incredibly selfish thing?

Eisenhower Library

Yesterday I arrived at the library on Eisenhower at 11.30 and found a little desk against the window at the back and settled down with some poetry. Then I got on with writing and rewriting some stuff. 'Crystal Lantana' got a third rewrite, totally stripped down. The first couple of stanzas went down from 30 words to 16. I think it's better, but I could be wrong. When you've sat with a poem for hours you stop being able to see it from a distance and this can hinder you. I keep rewriting it because I know it can be good, the bare bones of it I love.

First time I looked at my watch it was 2.15! Was gutted time had gone so quick, but happy it'd gone so peacefully. I didn't even hear it pass.

I am going to go back next Wednesday, and the Wednesday after that and the.... It was so good to just work and not have 10,000 interruptions or distractions. Once weekly doesn't feel enough but it will be for now. When Bingle goes to school I can go more often.