On Writing and Purpose

And writing on purpose. 

My writing fore the dinner scene has stalled.  My writing in general is still click-clacking away, but my brain doesn't seem to want to complete the task at hand, which is uber frustrating because I really need to get through it in order to   move forward.

IDK what the trouble is.  Usually i get a bunch of characters together in one plce and sparks fly, things happen, the plot advances in some way.  With this one?  Hardly.  It's like they're all too good at being WASPs to get anything accomplished.  

Plus I have introduced  new character, and usually that's fun for me, but this one is a real effing challenge.  She's super cruel, a real bitter bitch, and she's also bigoted and racist.  All fun things, right?  Turns out that sort of person is harder to write than i originally anticipated.  Picture Lucille Bluth with none of the charm, lol.  

And all these secrets are swirling around in the air and it is getting mighty hard to keep em straight and remember who knows what and who did what to whom and all that banana sandwich. 

Overall I am still enjoying the process. And beginning to feel curiosity about other people's writing processes.  For example, I'm reading the Sookie Stackhouse series, and I'm wondering if the author, Charlaine Harris, writes in sequence, beginning to end, or skips around.  I wonder, too, if she sits down and dreams up a mystery plot first, then a romance plot, then the subplots, or what?  Does she make a big diagram like aaron likes to do?  And did she have a multi-book plan when she started out?  Like JK Rowling?

i read somewhere that Margaret Mitchell wrote all her favorite scenes, all the important ones, the meaty, juicy ones first and then had to sort of force herself to go back and write the filler, the connective tissue.  If you have read Gone With The Wind you might have noticed that this approach shows, as some of that filler is ass-boring.

Right now I have a tenuous plan for the main characters of the Cedar Falls stories that I'm crafting.  But I haven't sat down and made a big flow chart like aaron does.  I also do the margaret mitchell thing-- I write what I want to write when I want to write it.  I write scenes that spring up out of little seedling nuggets.  Sometimes I write to fill a prescription, to accomplish something very specific and necessary to plot advancement-- other times i have just a kernel of an idea or a feeling I want to explore, sometimes just a word or phrase pops into my head and I sit down and let it happen however it happens.  That's when I get surprised.  Surprising things happen.  Isn't that mental?  I wonder if aaron is ever surprised by his characters.  He does so much pre-planning and forethought.

He sat on the couch with me a few days ago and asked me why I liked writing.  Seems like a simple question, right?  But as I tried to unpack my answer I discovered that communicating my feelings about writing was more of a challenge than maybe it should be.

The simple answer would be:  Because it makes me happy.

But then, he prompted, Why?  Why does it make you happy?  Why do you like it?

Well.  I tried to give this fair consideration.  Noone has ever asked me that, not quite like that, and as I didn't go to school for it, haven't spent countless semester hours analyzing this and laboring over it and picking it apart, this felt like virgin territory.  A vast wilderness of unexplored thought and emotion.

Well, says I, I like the characters.  Personal dramas have always grabbed me and turned on the juices.  As a theatre person i groove on Albee and LaBute and even Mamet because of what the people do to, for, with, and at one another.  Character-based plots, or whatever.  Checkov too, i suppose, and to some extent Miller.  

As a kid it's barbies.  Who's ken kissing now?  Wasn't he just about to propose to Midge?  Why is he naked under a handkerchief with Teresa all of a sudden?  Dear oh dear.  The scandal.

Then it's the Sims.  Jesus christ, is it ever the sims.  Creating all these virtual people, setting them up for foibles and fuck-ups, friendships and families and filthy transgressions.  Cedar falls sprang directly from all that.

I've always liked soaps.  And romance novels.  And BBC costume dramas where personal relationships ARE the entire plot.  War and such are the backdrops of these stories, not the catalyst to action.  Oh, sure, we may be at war with france, but what really matters is Did Lord Chesterton look askance at Lady Hartfordshire?  Whatever could that glane have meant?!

I'm always making up stories and i have been since I was a kid.  Only i hardly had the time or energy or patience to sit down and write them out.  hell no.  Usually I just had these characters in my noggin and would play pretend, by myself, and let the plot unfold as it went along.  Sometimes I'd drag my friends into it, like the time I told my dear friend Alison stories about our inevitable and scandal-filled future as the young wives of various members of the band U2.  Maybe I should write some of that shit down, only change the band to a fictional one...

But mostly it was just me.  Me in my room talking for all the characters, acting out little melodramas, the stories and plots and high-emotions now lost forever, ephemera in the ether.

But I have always tried to be more proactive.  Tried to write.  My downfall has always been this need for perfection.  This need to be the best.  Exceptional.  To avaod mediocrity at all costs.

While this can lead to some great stuff, and has, what it mostly produces is a paralytic feeling of constipated and thwarted greatness.  Not helpful.

That's why finally the promise.  The vow.  To just fucking write already.  Just write and embrace the imperfect nature of it.  Allow, with grace, the mistakes and the typos and the mediocrity and the general suckiness of it.

A vow to enjoy it above everything else.  it has been the advice I've been giving my student actors for years now.  "Just have fun"  and "The most important thing is to have fun out there!"

Of course it would be nice if you remembered your lines and didn't suck, but have fun!

So I tasked myself with writing every day, but ordered myself to abandon all hope of greatness.  I found liberation in that.  

Since then writing has become a very pleasurable activity.  A beloved hobby.  

I can't even remember, really, what it was like before I started putting my little scenes into the keys on a laptop.  I used to just zone out around the house or at work and play out the little dramas in my head.  Now I feed them into this little machine and there's some lasting record of them.  Wild.

What do I enjoy, why do I like it, why does it make me happy?

*It's a creative outlet, and creative souls need to create or they wither and perish.

*It's a satisfying thing, to write little vignettes or little blog entires.  Kind of cathartic most days.

*It's fun to problem solve;  I need X to happen, so I have to add Y and divide by N or whatever.  (i'm not super with math metaphors.)

*I like the stories.  I re-read them all the time.  Maybe this is narcissitic?  I don't actually care.  I re-read and I look forward to new ones every day.

*It's a challenge, an engaging one but not an overwhelming one.  It excercises my brain, keeps me thinking, keeps me busy, keeps me invested in something when so many aspects of my life are less pleasing.

*It feels good.  Almost always.  It feels awesome to sit down and after an hour or whatever, to have something I've done.  I wonder if this is how people who draw feel?  Blank paper one minute, something you've created the next.  It's a heady feeling.

So there it is.  I seem to have gone off on quite a tangent.  I'm certain there's probably alot more to it than the points i've enumerated, but that's what i've got right now.

Aaron seemed thoughtful and saddened about that discussion.  He says for him, so often, writing is not fun.  That it's alot of work and it is frustrating.  I sympathize, hell I even empathize.  He's holding out for perfection, which is a gumm-up-the-works wrench in the machinery.  His product is, as a result, infinitely better, just as mine used to be when I'd labor over it and stress over it and beat myself up over it.  

But really?  What kind of masochist wants to do that to themselves?  One of the best things /i learned in acting school was to relax into it.  Relax, and breathe, and be alive in the moment.  And mistakes happen.  Fuck it.  Keep breathing, keep moving forward, and, oh yeah, have fun out there.

My dear friend jeff asked me to think about what makes me the happiest, what activity just feels the most right in my life, because whatever it is, that's what my purpose is in life, and that's what I should be focusing on making a living at.  After some joking about going into pron or prostitution because I enjoy sex very much, He asked about acting.

Well.  Well, well, well.  Acting felt good.  Felt right.  I was damned good at it too.  But you know what never felt right or good or even tolerable to me?  Auditioning.  I guess I just want the universe to call me up and offer me fantastic roles in shows.  

So then what?  Teaching?  No.  Flat-out no.  I am generally proud of my teaching abitlity.  Am often pleased and have moments of clarity and enthusiasm and even affection for teaching, but no.  It has never come as naturally to me as, say, acting, and it has never felt quite as rewarding-- well, not in the same way.  Somethimes it can be immeasurably more rewarding because it is a selfless thing, teaching, and that's damned good for the soul.

But then what?  I'm loath to name writing.  Because if I did then i'd have to take it more seriously, right?  I'm not prepared to go there.  Hell, I can't even interest people in reading my fiction, other than Danielle-- who enjoys them but I'm convinced slogs through most of them mainly because she is an amazing friend.  Plus, it helps that she just loves to read, reads all the time, and therefore is open and willing to read my stuff and give me feedback and be a creative sounding board.  Wow.  Thanks again, D, you are a great fucking friend and an awesome person.  i love you and can't even hope to measure up to how great and giving you are and always have been to me!

Danielle tangent. lol.

But yeah, so really only danielle reads the fiction, which is fine  (I'm honored, actually!), I'm not actually surprised or hurt really, but can you imagine me trying to take my writing more seriously?  My own husband and partner doesn't take the time to read it, how can I expect a publisher or an agent or THE PUBLIC to be interested?

So it remains a hobby.  A fun, beloved, engaging and satisfying hobby.  And an endeavor too.  To develop and strengthen my creative voice and muscle.  I believe strongly that we all have a voice and we should all be developing it, embracing it, and sharing it.  The internet is the new oral tradition.  I'm proud to have my voice among the din.

In vaudeville i'd have gotten the hook by now.  So, with a piano playoff, lemme say g'night folks, see ya next time!