Nothing is Original/Everything is Original

I love observing human behavior--how people move and talk, how they twitch and stare and defend themselves.  It's so endearing, and also, as an author, very instructive.  I love studying how other people tell stories:  their plot lines and character traits, how they use settings and pull off certain catastrophes.

After enjoying the ride of an exquisite story, I'm often inspired and juiced up to create one; other times, I'm totally depressed (the Harry Potter series manages to breed both effects in me).

I start to worry...  I'll never do this as well as he or she did.  I can't even...  Or, oh shit!  That's my idea about a dead protagonist--someone got to it first!  I thought it was unique!  Now here it is, played out in a dozen different books and movies.  (My guy's not a vampire, so at least he's got that going for his uniqueness...)

Soon follows the nasty realization that every artist has contended with:  it's all been done before.  It's all been done stunningly, unbelievably well.  And it's been done badly.  However you slice it, someone has already diced it.

It's true.  Just breathe with that...

And don't you dare give up on your projects because of it.

I can't imagine many chord progressions, metaphors, plot twists, color schemes, or jokes whose bones haven't been used and reused by another arist at some point in human history.  Can you?  Innovation occurs everywhere, for sure; everything keeps changing.  But ultimately we're all equipped with the same notes and words, the same patterns to play with.  It's not about finding something original; there isn't anything.

Keep breathing.

Because the beauty of knowing that nothing is original, is also understanding that everything is original.  Because there is no one out there exactly like you.

I know, I know, this might seem cheesy, but bear with me, because it's actually quite stunning--

While all chord progressions have been rocked out on the guitar, they haven't been rocked out by YOU.  They haven't been given your flavor and pace.  While the theme of the heroic journey has been explored, killed, and then resurrected again for centuries, the journey has yet to be described and transmuted by ME.  With my twists, my vision, my flare.  My expression precedes me, it morphs my words, and textures my inflections without me even trying.

I am the lens through which I express myself.  And I couldn't stop being an original lens, even if I wanted to.  In that way, not every story has been told, because I'm still alive; and I haven't told mine yet.

The Deep Death

Most people value the space between birth and death; it's called life.   It's pretty easy to love.

But not everyone values the space between death and life; the deep rest between destruction and creation.

It can sound scary and dark to stretch death beyond an instantaneous event into a stanza of collapse; of inaction; of utter emptiness.  Of not yet.  I admit that sometimes experiencing the empty space between creative bouts can evoke a sense of being buried alive. 

But doesn't need to be so dramatic; not at all.  Sometimes the deep death occurs in just a pause; in a gentle separation; in a simple choosing of one thing over another.  It can be experienced more like an exhale than like laying waste to a village.  But that brevity doesn't make the death any less substantial--or important. 

I call it the deep death because it doesn't take long to hit it--but the affects are profound.  It can happen as quickly as pulling apart for a breath in the middle of kissing (oh, relish the death of separation!), or take as long as that month you put away your manuscript in order to "gain perspective" on it.  (What a clean way to say "die".)

As writers and artists, it is terrifying yet crucial to honor the rest time between death and life--between when our juices stop flowing and when they start up again.  Everyone has their own favorite flavor of fear around honoring this emptiness:  I'll get lost in there forever, my creativity will dry up if I don't keep the vein open, I have deadlines and bills to pay...

My experience is that honoring the rest after death cultivates fertility, just like the rotting of dead plants feeds the next cycle of growth.  When I let myself go fully into that chaotic, empty place of rest--no matter for how long--I emerge with new awareness and fresh energy.  I don't always get to know when I come out; but I trust that life follows death as inevitably as death follows life.

As a creative being, avoiding the reality of emptiness and inaction is like putting yourself on life support and being unwilling to pull the plug.  It's like refusing to go to sleep and then expecting brilliant performances day after day.

Let one moment die so the next can be fully reborn as something your former self couldn't have even  conceived.  Pull the plug, my pretties, and go for the ride.  And don't worry;  you'll be back.

Ode to the Scrivener Tutorial

Oh Scrivener Tutorial, you are so sexy...  you create a little world that's just for the two of us to explore.  My tutorial is my own and no one else's; I save it on my hard drive, and I can change it whenever I want.  You make me click on links, then open up photos just to see that I can, and then you make me come back again--you little jokester.  You tease me through an entire landscape of writing tools, all created for my ease. 

You're so charming.

Oh Scrivener, you have so many boxes.  You're editing box is so... big.  And your synopsis box is so cute and small, with its little lines just like an index card.  I think you have a box for every need I have.  I'm starting to get sweaty.

And the binder is just so organized, I'm a click away from any chapter I want, even scenes and character sheets and I can navigate between them all in five different ways with two separate sets up buttons and command functions and the pull down menu and--

Wait.

I'm grabbing a glass of wine, Scrivener Tutorial.  I'm pouring us a drink.  You and I are going to slow down and take this real slow.  We're going to savor the experience of getting to know each other.  Because I'm going to finish my book on you.  Ohhhh, yeah.

The Love of Brevity

I have been editing my novel for the past several months, with a keen eye towards "less is more"--trim a few words off a tired sentence, and all of a sudden it is throbbing alive.  I have attempted, before, to cut words ruthlessly, to show no mercy, to pare down a paragraph like some Viking woman carves up a side of elk. 

But today, in my editing, I owned brevity differently.  Today I felt the pleasure of how "less" creates space, and how space cradles possibility.  Spaces holds an experience open to be re-imagined and created.  I get to conjure my own images, and make my own assumptions.  My eye slides eagerly to the next sentence.

In my editing today I accessed a clear, loving boundary, a boundary most tune in to what what serves.  It is the loving place inside that says:  enough. 

This word doesn't add; this word clogs and stifles.  But here, in this place, we can run on a little, flourish and dribble and I will eagerly follow along...

Brevity invites my favorite type of word: verbs. 

Verbs are the artillary of writing.  They tighten, squirt, indulge, shatter, blast, eavesdrop, tiptoe, anticipate, and dissolve. 

They're like tiny bullets that explode inside their targets; they accomplish a great deal in the minimal amount of space.  They're fantastic, almost erotic, objects that I encourage you to get to know intimately if you have any interest in writing.

Here's how far I go, in case you want to follow me:  Evaporate and dissolve seem like the same word, right?  They could easily be interchanged in a sentence; but try them on in your mouth.  Evaporate.  Dissolve.  To me, one spreads--the other doens't.  One seems to happen quickly while the other lingers, almost erodes...

This is what I do for you, my darling reader.  I try to give it to you exactly.  I hunt for the most delicious words and then offer them up in a sentence so smokin' that we can simultaneously shout out--Yes!  That's it! 

And also relax.  Because in the presence of the truth--when the inside matches the out...  I relax.

Obsession

It takes a certain level of obsession to be a novelist.  To go over the same territory a dozen times and finding a way to make it fresh.  To revisit the same moment again and again, and work it until it sparkles, until its natural, until it hurts just the way I want it to.

Life is lived going forward, going blindly into the unknown of the next moment.

But the creation of a novel is lived backward, sideways, any way I want it, the best and worst parts repeated again and again.  I can go back and fix what didn't work, erase a mistake, or take a new action and get an entirely different result.

In my writing I get to render the chaos of life into the tempered line of a story.

Until this moment, I always thought of myself as an outcome driven writer:  I want the satisfaction of a finished product, of a beautiful sentence, a book deal, or a wowed audience gushing in their seats.

But at this moment, I am struck by how much I love the process.  I love polishing a scene until it's shiny and fluid like a flowing river, organically flowing and twisting along.  I love consciously crafting an experience until it gets closer and closer to what I want.  I love seeing what I can accomplish with just the changing of a word, and I love being utterly surprised by what comes out, in both the quick snaps of inspiration and the well-oiled nuances that emerge on their own over months.

It takes a certain level of obsession to be a writer.  Luckily, I've got it.

The Flying Arrow

 I want to move you.  I want to keep you up at night.  I want to consume you and make you cry.  I want to turn you on, make you laugh, and get inside your mind.  I want to stretch it and squeeze it, and I want to be surprised at what comes fluttering out. 

I want to do this for myself as well.  But right now I am the arrow, my dear, and you are the target.

Of course, you enter the experience voluntarily--that is the best part.  You're not required to pick up a certain book, or watch a certain movie.  You enter because you want an experience.

You want me to move you, need me to, even.  You want to be taken away--on a story, on a dream, to a world that doesn't exist except in our unified minds, but a world that becomes so real-- 

Play it all out in my book, I don't mind--your most disturbing fears and pulse-racing fantasies.  I invite you, even, to use me.  Use me to experience that which you never will in this life, and I'll do the same.

You want me to move you, my dear, and I will delightfully, thankfully, soul-shakingly oblige.