Chapter 1

WHY WRITE?  WHERE WRITE?  AND FOR WHOM WRITE?

WHY WRITE?

Why write?  Generally the answer is some variation on “to communicate” and/or “to record/remember.”  For me it is both.  I get ideas for films, and for some reason actors, crew members and producers like to see the details of the idea for a film written down before they all gather together to make the film.  I think this is silly, but it works for now.  So, I learned to write to capture the ideas I had for films and to record them and communicate them.  It turned out to be a good idea, since I forget my creative ideas almost as fast as I have them.  But everyone has their own reasons to write, and we will look at this again in Chapter 8.  Oh and in the spirit of full disclosure the main reason I wrote as a form of self expression for many years was affordability, pens and paper are relatively cheap and yet the form of written fiction is at least as respected as any other form of self expression that costs oh so much more.  Also, writing is an activity that can be done alone while you wait for the forces of nature to surround you with collaborators, agents, actors or anyone else you might find handy for the process of productive creative self expression.

Here is a little list of possible reasons to write that came from my students during class:

To keep knowledge

For fun

To fantasize

To entertain

To share

To record

To praise

To love

To release

To bring into consciousness

To scold

To ensnare (to trap)

To change things

To warn

To open people’s minds

To remember

For the feeling of creative fulfillment

To communicate ideas

To influence people

To guide

To scare

To make people laugh

To banish ignorance

To open up a world

To create

To thank

To mourn

To come to a realization

To come to a revelation

To forgive

To woo

To englamour

To evoke emotions

To manipulate

To provide yourself with company

For money

To look cool

To justify

To tickle

To self excavate

I would like to add to this list, to travel to places you have never been and to travel to places and times to which no one has ever been, and to meet people no one has ever met.

EXERCISE #1 – REASONS TO WRITE

This is an easy one.  Cover the list above and write your own list of every reason that you can think of that you write.  Write AT LEAST 30 reasons, and if you run out of ideas start making them up.  The reasons can apply to any kind of writing, from signing a credit card slip to finishing the great American novel or emailing your Aunt Phyllis.  Start now.  Go.  …Unless you don’t like being told what to do, then by all means, start when ever you feel like it, if you feel like it.  Or don’t start at all, I’m not your mother.  (Whichever one of these directions makes you feel most like picking up a pen, please feel free to use it for all the exercises in this book.) 

A good rule of thumb if you don’t know what to write, for this or any exercise, is simply don’t let the pen stop moving.  Just keep putting down words, they may be nonsensical, they may be more brilliant than you know, but as long as you keep putting down every word that comes, after a while they will lead you somewhere or at least will get them out of you, so next time you write you will be clearer.  I will say this again many times:

You don’t have to be right, you just have to write.

A PRODUCTIVE WRITING ENVIRONMENT IS…

A productive environment is one where writing gets done.  So forget about everything anyone ever told you about what it should be, a productive writing environment is one where you get a lot of writing done, writing that you want to get done.  If that is your bed, then it’s your bed.  If that is a coffee house, then it’s a coffee house.  If it’s Chuck E. Cheese’s, then it’s Chuck E. Cheese’s, (you may laugh, but this is actually where I go when I feel stuck creatively).

EXERCISE #2A – WRITING ENVIRONMENT

Spend 5 to 15 minutes writing down all the details of an environment in which you find it relatively easy and pleasant to write, or where you enjoy being while you write.  Where are you when the details of fictional worlds come easily to you?  Write down all the sights, sounds, smells, ideas and feelings that you think of when you think of this place.  Think of the furniture, view, people, music and any other specifics of the place you have in mind.  Keep writing in any way that feels right to you, any voice, any point of view, even if it turns into a list, even if it turns into a story.  Everything you write down is right for you.  Just start with the intention of describing in some way an environment that you like or would like to write in.  It can be one you’ve been to 100 times, or one you imagine.  Start now.  Go.  I don’t care if the cat needs to be let out, it can wait 10 minutes, start writing now.  Unless you have to go to the bathroom, I’m very pro bladder health, so go ahead and take care of that, you just start as soon as you are back.  OK, now go!

EXERCISE #2B – IDEALIZED WRTING ENVIRONMENT

Great!  Whatever you wrote, or thought about if you haven’t been writing the exercises, I’m sure it was great.  Just the fact you are reading a book about making your writing easier and more fun is great, so I stand by my statement.  Great!  Now if you feel like it, or when you feel like it, do the same exercise with an idealized version of a writing environment.  Everything in the universe that you can think of that would be in your ideal environment.  No idea is too crazy.  We are looking for new ideas here.  Where would you be when all the ideas you ever wanted were available to you for the picking?  I often find, when I do this “won the lottery” and “command all universal laws” type of thinking, that after a about 20 or 30 ideas I come up with one that actually costs nothing and is easily attainable, just because I freed my mind up a bit.  And whatever you come up with, it will give you some ideas for concrete things that you can bring into your environment in ways you can’t imagine while you are writing, so don’t try.  Just go wild with fantasy.  No one need ever read this, so just be honest about what would be in an environment that would be enjoyable and productive for you in an absolutely ideal world.  This should be fun.  Remember, things can change at any time, tomorrow this could be your universe.  And the more specific you get, the more likely that is.  Be nice to yourself.  Give yourself everything, at least in your fantasies! 

AUDIENCE – THE LISTENING FISH

Whoever you think the audience is for your writing can make a big difference in the tone of your work and whether it gets written.  For instance, I like the tone of my writing when I write to my friend and ex-husband, Jan.  So, “Hi Jan” I’m actually writing this book to you mostly.  On the other hand, recently I was writing a short story and I was half way through when a friend of mine said, “I would like to read that story when you are done.”  Suddenly I couldn’t write.  I had started the story with the intention of submitting it to a short story competition, but when the idea of that specific person I knew reading it entered my head, the whole story seemed silly.  Possibly it would have seemed silly to my friend, or maybe I was just imagining this, but whatever the reason it stopped me cold.  So I decided I wouldn’t show the story to him, and went on writing to my unknown audience, hoping the story would go out and find someone who liked it.  Personally, the story seemed kind of girly and had made me mad, because it had made me cry, even though it was pretty girly.  But some people like that kind of thing.  Ok, I like that kind of thing. 

Finding the idea of an audience that not only allows you to write, but inspires you to write is a great gift.  And remembering to go back to that idea of an appreciative audience for your work when you start feeling like it doesn’t have value or isn’t what you want.  This will help keep the creativity flowing through the rough spots and to the other side where the good ideas just flow. 

At one point in my life, I had almost entirely stopped writing fiction, hadn’t written much in years and whenever I tried it was painful or scary, and the process and product made me feel worse.  This was when I got a fish.  I’m not recommending you buy a fish, because they are surprisingly hard to keep alive and I have killed several by now.  But while he was alive, he was a really really good audience.  And before I would go to sleep at night, I began telling him stories.  Every night I would make up a new bedtime story.  It was one of the most pleasurable creative experiences I have had to date.  So, I would recommend trying the exercise below more than once, until you find audiences (or absences of audiences) that make you feel inspired to write.

EXERCISE #3 – AUDIENCE

Part 1:  What audience do you usually write to?  Write a paragraph describing the audience you most often think of as people who will be reading your work.  This may be very specific (third graders), or a complete blank slate of nothingness, or some future people who are huge fans of your work.    

Part 2:  What audience would make you feel most free to do your best work?  That may be two questions.  What audience would make you feel most free?  What audience would inspire you to do your best work?  Write two paragraphs describing such an audience.  Again, this may be very specific or very vague.

Part 3:  Write two more paragraphs, about the color gray while thinking of the audience that makes you feel free while you write.

Part 4:   Write two more paragraphs about a walk you once took while thinking of the audience that inspires you to do your best work.

Look back at the differences.  Does it give you any insight into how thinking of your audience can work for you and benefit your writing and/or enjoyment of writing?

The Listening Fish, an example

Below is one student’s response to thinking of a specific “ideal” audience while writing.

THE IDEAL AUDIENCE:: The group of crackheads on 12^th at Chicon.

Once in a distant land where fog clouded the view of every woman and every man, individualized calls similar to that of an exotic bird were used instead of names.  The grassy hills were full of celebration and idea storytelling.  People told stories with noises.

Little Flange Rucococo was a visionary.  She often had a crowd at her feet while she wove together polyphonic melodies that fell and rose with emotional implications so epic, you were worried you would cease being human.  She would crawl to find her space, usually a slight slope and lay her head against the earth.  The grass would tickle her ear and she would be still breathing with her eyes closed until a sudden attack of sound would involuntarily escape from her mouth.  Sometimes she jumped with a start as if she herself was surprised it was coming if at all.  Sometimes others did.

Suitors from all other knolls would come to the village to hear her bleats and offered their currency, made useless and absurd in comparison to the beauty of her moving vocal improvisations.

Once someone went into her grass hut and stole her in the night.  When she awoke in the hands of a dirty thieving mongrel, Flange Rucococo sang so mournfully that the thief scratched his own arms into bloody stumps by blindly trying to get her back to wherever she wanted to go – as fast as humanly possible.

When she got back to the safety of her grassy knoll, she looked at the one who put her down outside of the doorstep and farted, then immediately turned away to go inside, back to sleep.

She dreamt of flying through waterfalls.

                                                - Sonia Saxon