Writer’s Block or The Great White Elephant in the Room March 24, 2008
Posted by Bethany Kesler in Writing.Tags: Creative Writing, exercises, Fiction, writer's block, Writing
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This was an assignment I did for my Creative Writing class, last spring. We had to conceptualize what Writer’s Block was for us and then write it down. This was what my conceptualization of what the infamous Writer’s Block was ( at least in my own head that is).
Stage One
It starts out in my head with a cloud, wispy, sort of nebulous just very subtly insinuating itself into my brain. I can still see my plotlines and characters, but I find myself having difficulty reaching out to them, my fingers constantly slip as I try to hold onto them. Sometimes I am able to successfully navigate the cloud and push through it. Other times, I can’t because it is too strong for that. I wander in the fog, calling out for the characters and plot, but never find them.
Stage Two
Then it moves to my fingers and the curious sensation of having several teams of very tiny bricklayers whose only job is to build up walls and barricades at the tips of my fingers. So that even if I did manage to work my way through the cloud in my head, the ideas and plotlines come to a screeching halt at my fingers. This is by far one of the most frustrating aspects of this strange phenomenon called writer’s block. Because I often wind up with the feeling that if I can get my fingers to cooperate, then the sensation of the typing will help to dissipate the cloud in my head.
Stage Three
Then finally it’s an actual sort of person, not quite spirit and not quite fully tangible. She is standing facing me, her palms touching mine and her face a hairsbreadth away from mine. She is wearing my face and she is the final stage, there is no getting around her. Because she is, essentially me, she has all of my knowledge and understands how I think, which makes it easier for her to counteract any move I make. I can’t take her down without sort of annihilating myself and ultimately killing the story.
So I back down and wait for another day.
Why I Write March 24, 2008
Posted by Bethany Kesler in Writing.Tags: answers, questions why, Writing
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A friend of mine on one of the forums I subscribed to asked this question: Why do we do it? Why do we pour so much of ourselves into writing? Many of us pour our souls into it; we plot and plan and edit and worry and stress ourselves over something we’re not necessarily *required* to do. It’s not for extra credit or prestige, many of us aren’t even trying to make a career out of it.
So why do it? Why put all the effort and time into it?
So after pondering this over, I finally came up with an answer:
In my first post, I spoke about Magic and Good Madness. Writing for me is just that. Magic. Something wonderful and inexplicable and indescribable. It fulfills me in a way that very few other things can. That’s why I do it.
And at the risk of sounding cliche, I write because it’s part of who I am. I could no sooner stop writing (or dreaming which then leads back to writing) then I could stop breathing. I write on and about everything. A interesting thought occurs to me and i’ll write it down so I don’t lose it.
Happy times, sad times, I’ll write about those, sometimes after writing down what happened and how you felt about it, you find yourself with a new perspective on the matter, better able to think things through and understand the other side of things (when you have siblings who are diametrically opposite you personality wise, this comes in handy sometimes). I also write to get the plot bunnies out of my head before they drive me insane. By plot bunnies I mean those stories that just pop into your head and refuse to leave until you write them. They permeate your thoughts and dreams until you write them out of desperation to exorcise them form your skull.
They are worse nags than the School Nazi ( a charming sobriquet for my mother who fro a while homeschooled my sister and me) on a rampage. Mostly I write because it relaxes me and because there’s this driving need in me to share the stories that come out of my mind, to get these characters and scenes out of my head and onto paper.
I leave you with this quote by Roald Dahl who states, ‘And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.’
I’ve found some of that magic and I’ve discovered some of those secrets and that’s why I write.
The Hardest Thing To Do March 24, 2008
Posted by Bethany Kesler in Writing.Tags: first sentences, Writing
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Often times, the hardest thing for me to do when I start anything, papers, essays, short stories, novels, what have you…is to write that first sentence. A blank page in my word processor/notebook is quite intimidating, I’ve found. After I’ve broken through on the first sentence however, it seems to get a bit easier. The next two or three sentences are slightly difficult to get out, but each sentence after them gets easier and easier to type/write out. By the end of the first paragraph I am typing/ scribbling away like a mad fiend. This can continue for hours or minutes depending on how long it takes me to get the idea out and how developed the idea is. Vague ideas are quicker to scribble out than the really developed specific idea bunnies. Writing’s not easy, but if you stick at it, one word, one line, one sentence at a time, eventually you wind up with something that might resemble something like a draft of a finished product.
But before you can get there, you must first write that first sentence.
Dark Fiction, A Definition March 21, 2008
Posted by Bethany Kesler in Writing.Tags: article, dark fiction, darkfic
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Here is an article I wrote a couple years ago for an archival fanfiction site that unfortunately is no longer up. Certain contributors were asked to write articles about various meta topics. I chose to write an opinion piece on what exactly Dark Fiction is, since the term is both broad and a bit subjective. Unfortunately the only copy of it I have is an old paper copy scanned into PDF format. So I’ve uploaded it as a file you may download if you wish.
First Lines March 18, 2008
Posted by Bethany Kesler in Writing.Tags: first lines, Writing
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“It’s always a good idea not to leave your dead lying around.”
This is the perfect example of what an ideal first line should be (thanks to my wonderful boss who gave this particular gem to me).
Today’s topic is first lines.
The above example is an amazing first line for a short story or novel. I mean, it right there captures your audience’s interest. We immediately want to know who said this and why it was being said. It keeps us reading, keeps us intrigued and that makes it an excellent first line.
First lines are important. That can’t really be emphasized enough. First lines really are vital to your story. They are what introduces us to the characters, and the plot lines, and the story. They are the hook that reels us in and keeps us reading past that first paragraph.
So when you write your novel or short story, make sure you choose your first line very carefully.
Sleeper Awake March 17, 2008
Posted by Bethany Kesler in Good Reads.Tags: book review, Bridge to Terabithia, Katharine Paterson, Writing
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A review of the book, Bridge to Terabithia by Katharine Paterson.
One of the things that always captures my imagination when I read this book is how the author manages to describe such a rich and deep world with only a few words. I mean I open the book and the first page just immediately calls to me, I can hear the truck and see it clanking down the road. As I read on, I can see in my mind’s eye, Jess Aarons getting up and running, almost flying as he practices. Jess is at first glance, just a simple country boy with simple country boy aspirations and pleasures, but then we see as the book goes on, Jess has a secret before he ever meets Leslie. Jess is an artist and the only sort of ally he has is his beautiful gypsy like music teacher, Miss Edmunds.
Then he meets this new neighbor of his who turns his life topsy-turvy. Leslie Burke is a *girl* and a girl who can run like nothing Jess has ever seen before and who has this unparalleled imagination that just blows him away. And one day, Leslie comes up with this idea, that they should create a place for themselves, a secret sort of imaginary kingdom where they could be the rulers of it all.
And thus it begins. Just by hanging out with Leslie and talking/associating with her, Jess has already started to change a bit, started thinking beyond just winning the next footrace and all. But Terabithia gives him something he couldn’t get anywhere else. A sense of purpose, of belonging, of responsibility. Being a king is not something lightly undertaken after all. Slowly Jess is starting to awaken, he’s starting to really *live* instead of just exist. The power of imagination is a mighty thing. Being around Leslie has a positive influence on Jess. He grows a bit after each of their escapades and adventures, even if he doesn’t quite realize it.
One of the hardest things for me, I suppose is remembering that Jess and Leslie are only 9-10 years old at the time of the story. Just kids. But yet on the other hand, they aren’t *just* two kids playing make-believe, they are the King and Queen of a magical land called Terabithia. I get lost in their struggles and triumphs that I forget that these are after all characters who haven’t even reached puberty yet. Jess and Leslie possess a sort of timeless quality and maturity that’s a bit unusual, yet seems to fit with them.
That’s the first half of the book, then there’s the second half of the book. Where Jess has the perfect day, going up to Washington with his beloved teacher, Miss Edmunds and seeing all of these great and wonderful sights that he just can’t wait to share with Leslie once he gets back only to find that while he has been gone, Leslie has slipped, hit her head, and then drowned in the river.
She’s gone. This wonderful, magical, mystical person who has twisted and turned his life upside down and sideways, who has been his best friend and partner in crime, and his fellow monarch is gone.
Who pushed and pulled at him and really made him stop and think about stuff, who told these amazing stories, and who was the catalyst for his imagination and mind waking up and realizing that there’s a great big world out there that he’d never even dreamed about, but that he wants to explore now that he know about it.
This pivotal person, his mentor of sorts, is gone.
Jess, understandably, is numb at first– like it’s all a bad dream he’s having and he just wants to wake up and end it, but he can’t, because it wasn’t a bad dream after all. Once he comes to that realization, he gets angry at Leslie for leaving him, for failing him just when he needed her the most. “She had made him leave his old self behind and come into her world, and then before he was really at home in it but too late to go back, she had left him stranded there —like an astronaut wandering about on the moon. Alone.” Page 114
Jess passes through all the stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance.
Chapter Thirteen is my favorite part of this book, because you see how Jess has matured and grown from where we first saw him in the beginning of the book to the person he is now. From making a funeral wreath for the fallen Queen to his rescue of May Belle at the beginning of the chapter to his epiphany at school. “He thought about it all day, how before Leslie came, he had been a nothing –a stupid, weird little kid who drew funny pictures and chased around a cow field, trying to act big–trying to hide a whole mob of foolish little fears running riot inside his gut. It was Leslie who had taken him from the cow pasture into Terabithia and turned him into a king. He had thought that was it. Wasn’t king the best you could be? Now it occured to him that perhaps Terabithia was like a castle where you came to be knighted. After you stayed a while and grew strong, you had to move on. For hadn’t Leslie, even in Terabithia, tried to push back the walls of his mind and make him see beyond to the shining world –huge and terrible and beautiful and very fragile?
(Handle with care–everything–even the predators.)
Now it was time for him to move out. She wasn’t there, so he must go for the both of them. It was up to him to pay back to the world in beauty and caring what Leslie had loaned him in vision and strength. As for the terrors ahead — for he did not fool himself that they were all behind him — well, you just have to stand up to your fear and not let it squeeze you white. Right, Leslie?
Right.” Page 126
This for me makes the book. This is what it is all about right here and it’s so true, so applicable to life now as it was then when the book was first written.
The end of the novel is beautiful for we see Jess now confident and assured, build a bridge with the extra lumber from the Perkins place and then induct May Belle into the magic of Terabithia. Jess’ journey is far from complete, but we have seen him grow and awaken and mature and now he is doing for May Belle what Leslie did for him.
And the magic goes on.
Magic, Dreams, and Good Madness March 16, 2008
Posted by Bethany Kesler in Writing.Tags: magic, reading, Writing
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May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good
madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks
you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or
build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the
next year, you surprise yourself.
~ Neil Gaiman
Magic is reading and writing and that amazing sensation when you get sucked into a novel or fic, sitting spellbound as you dive into imaginary worlds that sometimes seem to you as being more real than your own world. Magic is sitting with pen and paper or in front of the computer and watching as the ideas, daydreams, and specters of imagination solidify and become nearly tangible as they flow from your brain onto paper/word processor. It’s watching a character develop from a brief fragment of your mind into a living, almost breathing person, independent, with concrete personalities of their own. It’s watching the story develop and being swept away right alongside your characters, it’s surprising even yourself with the plot twists and turns. It’s Magic, life encapsulated in a dream bubble, or indeed as the title states, “Good Madness.”
To be a writer, to really be one is to be wildly, passionately, fabulously off-kilter in some way. I mean after all our classification in the DM IV should read: Evil and Sadistic Paranoid Neurotic Schitzophrenic Masochist…aka Writer. How else would the cliffhanger and other such beloved plot devices have to light?
Another less creepy, more poetic way to look at it would be to say that Authors/Writers channel life, hopes, dreams, wishes, nightmares even, but most of all, they channel life. Pure and Simple (no matter what Mr. Wilde might say).
