Do you ever feel like you have nothing to write about and wonder how you’re going to fill the blank space? Then you sit down and begin, the words don’t stop flowing?
We often have stories percolating in our mind without even being aware of them. They might seem like mirages, vague impressions.
We usually wait for the image to sharpen before we begin writing. This can cause us to stall on an idea and lose the compulsion to write it altogether.
We don’t have to wait to we have every detail of a book mapped out before we decide to write it. Sometimes the only way to bring a story into focus is to get it out so we can read it back to ourselves.
So take that leap of faith. Sit down and struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind.
For a long time, I was spiritually dead. If I couldn’t see
it, taste it, touch it, or explain it, it wasn’t real. The only place I felt
something holy was when I was writing. Something mysterious happens during the
creative process. Many artists feel more like conduits than creators.
I’ve written myself through many personal struggles. Each
time, it feels like I’ve written my way back home. Every character, every
scene, every resolution brings me one step closer to reintegrating with myself.
Just because we don’t understand our existence, just because
it seems like a cold evolutionary process that will be pointless as the sun
absorbs the earth, doesn’t mean there isn’t some divine plan being executed,
some beautiful piece of music being played out. It just means we can’t fully
discern it yet.
But the holy contour of life is there, and we sketch it out every time we write.
I took a few days off from this blog and from working on my WIP to reflect on the past and recover enough strength to continue. It’s funny because I wondered what I would write for this quote about loss and I realize I’ve been swimming in it.
I’m working on a book right now that includes a character who was inspired by someone close to me, one who is no longer breathing. He died a tragic senseless death and I was always angry with him for that.
Now he is back in painful detail. The wound is reopened. Blood seeps out. But by writing about him, I get to be with him again. I create new experiences with him. I can make him live forever in my readers’ minds.
When we write, we are our god selves. We have the power to set the world right. We can heal ourselves and give comfort to others.
We must accept loss forever, but through storytelling, we have a chance to turn it into something beautiful. We can make meaning out of meaninglessness. We can exist beyond death.
Purple prose is writing that is overly embellished. For me, the first thing that tips me off to purple prose are sentences that distract me from the story.
It’s a tricky balancing act to write descriptively without overdoing it. Some writers write more simply and let the story make the impact. Others have longer, slower plots that would put me to sleep if it wasn’t for their beautiful language.
I love language and the long, complex sentences that were common in fiction a few hundreds years ago. But modern readers are not so keen on a sentence that involves ten types of punctuation and occupies half a page. I’ve had to tone it down a notch.
So where is this elusive spot between purple prose and plain, boring writing? We swim in a language sea. How do we distill our ideas into the right words?
By writing a lot and reading even more.
Sometimes I don’t realize what I’m doing to my reader until it’s done to me. This can be a rude awakening, but it brings priceless self-awareness to your writing voice.
The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
So, we are past the halfway mark of Jack Kerouac’s Belief and Technique for Modern Prose, and he is riffing off his ideas like a heroin-infused jazz musician.
I am doing my best to elaborate on them, and I can’t promise you that my interpretation is what he meant. Some of his tips are very abstract, like this one about “the eye within the eye.”
But art is a two-way exchange. What the creator transmits and what the consumer receives may be two different things. Sometimes that’s the point of it.
So here’s my stab at #16.
I believe the jewel center of interest is curiosity. It is the eye within the eye because our curiosity is wisdom itself. It knows where to lead us, even when we think we are lost. And if we never find the answer we expected, our quest to leads to discoveries we never dreamed of.
For example, say you’ve outlined the perfect story. Then, as you write, you go wildly off course. You think you’ve ruined it, but you’re curious to see what happens. You keep going and once you’ve arrived at the end you realize that it’s much better than your original idea. In fact, you can’t picture it any other way.
What do you think?Am I close?
I’d love to hear your interpretation. Please share below!
Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
We all walk around with an interior monolog. For most of us, it’s a jumble of surface thoughts like…
What should I make for dinner?
Did I pay the internet bill?
Why did this asshole cut me off in traffic?
Man, I shouldn’t have eaten that shrimp taco.
It’s estimated that 95% of our thoughts are repetitive. Many of them are negative and unproductive. If we wrote from this place, we would torture our reader.
But there is another monolog, the one we keep with our inner creator. This is the one we write from.
Tapping into this deeper layer gives us peace. This is why writing is such a wonderful escape. We dive beneath the choking stream of shallow thought and swim through the aquifer of the extraordinary.
