Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Listen to Your Story
What I Learned from NaNoWriMo 2015
Just do this to write a novel.
How much different is writing from life?
In both we make decisions that carry us forward. Sometimes those choices work out well. Sometimes they drop us in a dead end. Mostly it is not clear where the choice leads, and so we carry on.
Writing 1667 words a day through November’s National Novel Writing Month forced me to look at every scene and imagine how it might move the story forward. Within the first few days, every scene, every action, nearly every word seemed full of, well, pivot. The story could turn 180 degrees—except the commitments my characters held worked time and again as a rudder, pulling their choices along a true direction.
Choice after choice makes the story. Along the way we interact with characters who enter the story because of our choices. And these characters bring with them yet more choices. Our commitments impact how we choose, drawing us like a lodestar consistently one way or another. But even those long-term commitments enter the choice-making machinery of writing and life.
Do you agree that writing and life move forward in a similar way? One difference is that with writing you get to go back and change the story.
You can’t do that with life.
Or can you?
Producing my story brought to mind Parker Palmer’s book Let Your Life Speak, a book I’ve recommended to many friends. Palmer’s advice gets at the nub of both writing and living: peering into the facts so far and taking a courageous view on where those facts could lead. Palmer realized, in looking back over his life, that a particular commitment had been leading him in ways that did not fit with what was happening and where he was meant to be.
In writing you lop off a sentence (or paragraph or chapter) to move the story forward. In life you make tough but wise choices that put you on a better trajectory.
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Dumb Sketch: Kirk Livingston
A Story: When Pinky Proposed to Bette (#323)
NaNoWriMo in Progress
One weekend I flew in to Atlanta on my way to a conference. I had a day layover and I had arranged a dinner with Bette, at her favorite Vietnamese restaurant. It was a warm place, full of every tasty smell you can think of. Cabbage and long-simmered pork and beef broth. The place was a kaleidoscope of people, every ethnicity. Every shape and size. Each table a crazy combination of hues. All tucking into bowls of pho and vermicelli salads. I would be tempted to come to this place just to see the people.
But my business that evening had a more long-term ring to it. That is, I had a ring, which I brought out toward the end of the meal.
“Bette,” I said.
I held her hand.
“I know I can never replace Howie,” I said. “And I don’t want to. Howie was my…
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A Disabling Fiction About Writing
Writing is Embedded
The fiction about writing is that it takes place in a special compartment, sealed off from everyday concerns. In part that is true, the best writers gain access to deep, hidden wells that supply the fodder for their process. Working writers locate those deep places regularly, whether or not their muse shows. In fact, it is typically the gears churning through the regular process that conjures whatever muse actually exists.
But more to the point, rather than being cut off and hidden away, the embedded writer pulls from experience—past, present and future—to load content into an emotional grid, commonly called a story.
I find myself writing lots of stories lately. My own short fiction, yes, and that is great fun. But also for clients with something to say. And these clients hope to release their content on a larger scale than what their marketing monologues have afforded. They hope to release their messages to a wider audience, which means making a coherent story that might interest others.
Even writing for clients—especially writing for clients—involves locating that deep well. It turns out that deep, special compartment is permeable in some way that lets real life flow through and collect into something meaningful at the other end.
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Dumb Sketch: Kirk Livingston
How Art Gets Created (Homage to Howie Becker)
I
followread and follow Keith Sawyer. Here’s an excellent post from him combining art and collaboration.
My approach to creativity was deeply inspired by Howie Becker’s 1982 book Art Worlds–a close analysis of the work done by painters, sculptors, and photographers, of course, but also all of the other roles necessary to get art done and to get it valued, sold, and talked about. Becker made a convincing argument that art doesn’t come from the solitary artist in the studio; there are many other people involved. They remain hidden only because we aren’t looking for them–we believe so much in the romantic myth of the solitary lone genius that we look right past everyone else involved in the collective creative process.
Basically, Becker believes that Yogi Berra was right: you really can observe the most by watching.
This quotation comes from a fascinating portrait of Becker in the latest New Yorker magazine. Becker is now 86 years old and spends most of his time in Paris…
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Please: Allow Me To Insult You–#27
Demonstrating one dumb sketch approach to life.
Parlor Game Gone Terribly Sour
I draw your likeness. You hate it. Hilarity ensues.
My 13 year old nephew aged dramatically: with my artistic skills he became a 30-year old with a bad 1970’s haircut.
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Let there be cheerleaders everywhere.
Thank you, SNL, for introducing these irrepressible characters into our cultural conversation.
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conversation is an engine 