On Writing – Page 13

Dear Diary – Exploring Character Through Diary Entries…

This is an article on writing originally published in the June/July 2004 issue of WCDR Wordweaver.

Dear Diary, Today I Discovered…

Is writer’s block getting you down? Are you working on a story but find that your characters are withholding information about themselves? What’s stopping you from getting into their heads, taking hold of the dark and sunny contemplations lurking there and pulling out the ever-illusive back-story?

Knowing your characters is, at times, the hardest part of writing fiction. You can leave them in limbo for days on end as you agonize over their next moves. If they’re not willing to open up to you, you’re stuck.

But as their creator, you should be omnipotent. It’s your right to intrude on their privacy and find out what’s under the surface. There’s no better way to do this than to take possession of their minds and write their personal diary entries!

One day I was faced with a character I loved, but could find no means to carry him forward into my story. Struggling with his motivations, I couldn’t imagine what he’d do next. It was obvious that I didn’t really know who he was. That’s when I had an idea. Why don’t I just step inside his head and find out? He could tell me where he wanted to go.

You might think this sounds crazy. But one of my personal theories about writers is that we’re all just a few drops short of a river to begin with (i.e., we’re right-brained geniuses who are able to see the world around us as a constantly shifting wonderland filled with endless fictional possibilities).

Maybe this diary entry concept is a writing tool you already employ. But if not, I have a feeling you might be thinking, ‘Hmmm, sounds like a good idea’, especially those of you who have a minor character haunting your backstage, waiting to be thrust into the limelight of your story.

Diaries don’t form who we are, but they’re definitely a living record of that forming. You can’t read a person’s diary without knowing them a whole lot better afterwards. I’ve been keeping separate diary notebooks for years, exploring my characters in ways I never before could.

I simply write a character’s name and a date at the top of the page, throw myself into that character’s headspace and begin writing the entry.

I find that the date I choose is always helpful in this character study. If I choose a date years prior to my story, I can learn things about my character that have helped to form the way he reacts to certain situations.

For instance, if I explore a childhood entry I might find him writing about a traumatic experience and I suddenly understand why he is timid and skittish. Or I may choose a date a week prior to my story and discover why my character is in her present mood. If she writes about losing her job, her true love and her house all in one day, I’m going to understand why, on page two of my story, it makes perfect sense that she’s on the subway with unkempt hair, waving a loaded .45.

You can also write an entry that takes place two months after your story ends. Think of the possibilities this opens up! You might learn how to end your story by knowing what your character is going through in the future.

You’re the creator. This makes you the god of the quirky little worlds you create. When writing your story, don’t feel the need to trap yourself within its timelines. You have the right to move freely through time – something your characters can’t always do themselves.

Sure, you’ll feel like you’re being intrusive, like you’re somehow invading a sacred place. You might even sense people breathing over your shoulder as you write. But don’t worry. You’ll learn that your characters enjoy writing in their diaries. It gives them the opportunity to stretch their limbs and tell you a little about themselves; maybe they’ll even feel more real and validated.

The entries you create will definitely have an impact on your stories, even if what you write never finds its way into your narrative. Consider these entries as getting-to-know-you sessions. Never actually using the material does not make this a futile exercise.

On the contrary, you may find yourself on the fast track with loads of new material to work with. These people will have lives leading up to and away from your stories. You will have to write faster just to keep up with them! Now, where was I?

Oh yeah, ‘Dear Diary…‘

Writers – Fill Your Toolbox with Love Not Hammers

I wrote this a few years ago. It was originally published in the WCDR Wordweaver Newsletter. I think it’s a good reminder for writers everywhere…

Filling Your Writerly Toolbox

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the writer’s toolbox could include such a thing as a hammer! We could smash those uncooperative words to bits and smithereens whenever they decide not to mold to the articulations of our wandering thoughts. Sadly, this is not a very helpful tool to the creative force behind writing. We would tend to think of the hammer as Home Depot’s answer to that nagging internal editor… not very practical when creating. Perhaps we should leave it where it belongs… in the editor’s toolbox. They are more apt to use it with the care, precision and respect the weapon, er, tool demands.

What the writer should be able to find in their toolbox are flowers. And trees. And memories. And people. And voices. And birds. We should be able to open that box every day and walk into another world. Picture Narnia without the bulky wardrobe, Neverland without the hassle of learning the leap of faith needed to fly or even Wonderland without the bumps and scrapes accumulated from the fall that takes you there. We should be able to open our toolboxes and look in, reach in and grab out imagination itself. Whether we crack it open for a creative session of poetry or to write the latest freelance article on sleep apnea, we should be able to find helpful gadgets inside that will help us reach our eventual goal.

Writers should realize that the world around them is their toolbox. They should remember to take long walks in conservation areas, memorizing the texture of bark and the names of plants, trees and flowers. (Or even the taste and grit of dirt on their tongues, if they are so inclined.) They should sit on benches in malls and stare into the faces of strangers. They should collect scars, hairstyles and peculiarities from these people… write them down in notepads for future use. They should be in the business of accumulation, swallowing whole the world around them and spewing it back into their neat little toolbox for future excavations into the world of words.

Alongside daisies, alders and people–pictures that can be freely amassed–writers should also find at least one dictionary and an accompanying thesaurus. (We are never too old to learn new words and strengthen our vocabularies.) Leaning against their collected sounds of the ocean, and insects and wind, they should find a good reliable style guide. These things help to curb our tendencies to ramble, suggest to us the best possible way to present our thoughts. These are all good things, just as necessary to the process of writing as jumping off the edges of our imaginations to discover other more tantalizing worlds than our own.

Whatever you choose to arm your own toolbox with, you should make sure it contains a healthy balance. It should be two parts imagination, one-part reference books and maybe even one-part bravado… borrowed or genuine. If this is not enough, if capturing the world and squeezing it into the small confines of an imaginary toolbox is not quite enough to get you to where you need to go…take courses. Attend workshops in the areas that interest you. Never forget to squeeze mentors and teachers into that bustling box. Never underestimate the amount you still need to learn to improve upon what you already know about this thing called writing… this beautiful gift that is yours for the taking. Cultivating your gift with a well-stocked toolbox is the only way to show it the respect it deserves.

Look Back, Look Way Way Back…the Writer You Used to Be

I was recently sifting through my previous blog, which is now locked away in the interwebz forever. It was called A WANDERING MIND and it was almost exclusively for poetry. Circa 2007-2010. It carried hundreds of poems upon its crooked little back. The thing I notice when I occasionally pull it up to have a read is that the poems were, by and large, inauthentic. Or, if you will, fictional. Sure, I occasionally pulled out an authentic retelling or heart-truth. But everything was cloaked and shrouded…presented from a place of darkness with just the tiniest hint of a back-lit glow to the authentic. I was writing from a place of self-repression.

I give you exhibit A. In way of preamble, I wrote it on March 30th, 2008. I never burlapped a thing in my life. Hydrangeas? The word must have sounded pretty to me at the time. The bloody things do not have winter limbs…if you do it right. I don’t recall EVER being in Penetanguishene. Or on a train heading north, for that matter. My father was never dying. What’s a Plymouth? I couldn’t pick one out of a line-up.

Things to Do Today

Remove the snow
from the burlap shrouds
encasing the hydrangeas,
ready their limbs for rebirth.

Take the train north
to Penetanguishene,
where screams of ennui
will be muffled, go unheard.

Call my dying father,
speak of ’72 Plymouths
getting air on railroad tracks
long since removed.

Light the candles
on the sky white mantle,
watch the flames flicker
and later disappear.

post-amble? Come to think of it, I did own something in that poem. I remember the weightlessness of going over railroad tracks while climbing a steep hill in a car. It’s a glorious feeling to get air. Especially if there’s music on the radio at the time. It’s all Dukes of Hazzard and what not.

The more I scour the old poetry, the more I think I should rewrite it with my freer post self-repression mind. When you live with a secret like childhood sexual abuse, you shift everything to fit into little boxes. Even all the things you want and need to be authentic are slightly askew. Simply because you’re not the you you were supposed to be (and you never will be–you are a changed version of what you would have could have been). Your walls and barriers and safe places BLOCK OUT just as much as they RESCUE AND SAVE. So, really, until you face the demons…there is no winning.

That poem had almost nothing to do with me. And just like the hundreds of other poems that came from that period of my writing life, I had no recollection of having written it. It is as separate from my psyche as War and Peace is. I don’t know if you’re aware or not, but I did not write War and Peace. It can also be said that I didn’t write any of the poems that came from the dark era. But I did. It’s a conundrum. How can you own something that is not connected in some way to who you are?

On the same day that I wrote the above poem, I wrote one that perhaps I can still feel a bit of connection to. My go-to novel to use as a template for the perfect novel has always been The Great Gatsby, so the admiration for F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of those things that is constant in my life…it was there in the darkness and it is here in the light. I suppose a vestige of who we are is always there, whether or not we choose or try to access it.

Ode to F. Scott Fitzgerald

And I will dig up his grave,
and wonder at the box
in which he is kept.
And I will adorn
myself with his bones,
wear them like a coat
enshrouding
my fragile body.
And if he be but dust
I will swallow
in handfuls
to have him inside me.
And all for the sake
of an image
he wrote,
will I suffer
the height
of my madness.
“and the curtains
and the rugs
and the two young women
ballooned
slowly
to the floor”.
And for that
I will adorn myself
with his bones,
wear them like a coat,
Wrap myself in wonder
and partake of his dust.

Perhaps it need stay in the darkness. From what I can gather, I dug up the old sport and ate his dust. These are things of darkness, I’m sure. But thus is the extent of my hero worship of his writerly abilities. So, I’ll own it still. It gets to stay.

I’m not sure what this blog post is about. I just feel the need every now and again to revisit the writer I used to be. I don’t try to judge him or weigh the texts of my past with the texts of my now. I don’t need to know that I improved, and I certainly don’t need to know that I haven’t. I just feel that–whatever it is that I find–I accept it for what it is. Something I wrote while on my journey. As with life and each step we take to get us to the step we’re about to take and the place in which we find ourselves, our past writing is what has brought us to who we are now. Just own it. Don’t be ashamed of it. Don’t discard it. Like the bad memory that made you who you are, the bad poem also had a hand in shaping the writer you have become.

Acceptance of self. It’s a good thing.

On the same day I wrote the two above poems, I wrote this one on apologies. I have no idea where my mind was at…but I won’t apologize to myself for having written it. I am writer, hear me roar.

Prelude to an Apology

We’ll let the devil
Tongue our eyes,
Tantalize
And drink our light
In gulps divine.
We’ll let the saints
In numbers,
Stomp our dreams
And teem inside,
With lust,
The dust divine.
And shout,
We will,
The awkward silence,
Awake the night
We walk in vengeance,
And just a slight of hand
Away from wonder,
We’ll construct
Our own mythology,
but never will we offer
Those elusive
Things we straddle
And preen to pretty,
The often considered
But never whispered
Hushed and hidden apology.

Be your writing. And remember to look back on the journey every now and again…