Ancilla L
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Class-Notes: How To Start Writing.
🕑 Added 2023-05-08 10:57:49 +0000 UTCNote: I am compiling and writing various text-books (one on writing, erotic writing and a few on kink), as I work through them I will post each "class" on here so all the information in the final textbooks will be available on my Patreon so you don't have to purchase the textbooks to access the information. It will be available only if you subscribe to the $5 tier and up, but I am making the first one available to all.
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How To Discipline Your Writing Practise and Navigate Writers Block.
Understanding your block.
Very often, we experience the desire to write but are unable to determine the subject we wish to approach. Or quite simply, the pressure of performing that pesky first sentence is so daunting, we stare at the page until the slightest distraction pulls us away. It's a loop within which it is easy to become trapped: I want to write? What do I write? I don't know what to write? How do I figure out what to write about?
Well, write about that.
The first step to circumventing a block is understanding your block. Blocks aren't usually based on skill, there usually is an emotional reason, sometimes an emotional response to a perceived lack of skill that stands in the way. Let's find yours. Start by writing about it. As far as the first sentence is concerned, you already have it —
"I want to write, but I am unable to do so because..."
There you go. Now you're writing. It's time to dig into this block. For the purpose of this piece, your block is your protagonist, flesh it out the way you would any character.
When did this block begin? What were the circumstances of it? What were you wearing the first time or the last time you sat in front of a page and nothing came out? What anxieties surround this inability to write? Are you worried you don't know enough fancy words? Are you concerned that you don't have credentials? Are you overwhelmed by the prospect of an elaborate narrative and how you will keep track of it? Is this an issue of focus? What are the thoughts that consume you when you are sitting before a blank page? When does the urge to write strike? What happens when you indulge it? What happens if you don't?
Work it out as you write through it. Writing about it won't necessarily fix it, but it will allow you to diagnose the issues with a specificity that enables effective problem-solving. Writers block is too general a problem to have a specific and effective solution, it means different things to different people, so until you dig deeper, you won't even have a problem to solve, just a nebulous discomfort and panic.
A note on panic.
While writing is a private and often solitary activity, there is an element of performance to it. It is natural for the pressure to perform to be accompanied by panic, but acting out of panic is the fastest way to ensure that you won't accomplish what you are endeavouring to do. Steer clear of reasoning like — *If I don't write right now, it will be proof that I will never write again.* Sitting down to write in a state of panic, or to prove to yourself that you can, is never about the writing, it's about what being a writer represents to you and what you think you risk losing if you are unable to do it.
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Methods To Get Started.
- The Conversation Method
Open up a document and begin a conversation between two characters, you can be one of them, or they can both be other individuals. Start with the simplest path of conversation.
Hi.
Hello.
How are you?
I am well. And you?
It rained this morning and my phone fell in a puddle, so not great.
I'm sorry! Why were you out in the rain?
.
.
.
Indulge these characters, let them reveal themselves to each other, develop their narrative, let the conversation carry on, without structure, in any direction that entertains you (much like improv) until themes, plot-points and a direction reveals itself. Once it does, use the conversation to start writing a structured piece. Maybe it begins with how these characters met or you'd rather write an essay about an idea that has been revealed by one of them. Use these conversations as a repository for what you want to explore further.
(Exercise on being informed by dialogue).
- Beginning In Media Res
Since the first sentence remains a major block to most writers, one of the most effective techniques is to begin in media res. In media res refers to opening in the middle of the action. Say you are writing a personal essay about your body image issues and how they tie into the social norms of beauty. Do you have a memory of an incident that connects to this theme? Begin your story in the middle of the incident, it creates the illusion that you've already revealed yourself to the reader and lowers the pressure you feel to ensure you have shared adequate context. It helps make you feel like you have proceeded further into the story than you actually have and makes it easier to identify the contextual information that needs to pad the incident.
- The Use of Prompts
My general and strongest suggestion with regard to prompts is that you develop your own list of them and update it as you get new ideas. When you sit down to write, this list serves as a rich source of information on what you wish to indulge. Here is a list of prompts that you can use and I have used with some success with students and for myself:
a. Writing the rainbow.
The idea is to write seven stories, each one informed in some way about a colour of the rainbow. I have done this exercise myself and it was revealing, interesting and very engaging. It can be anything you want, the colour itself may be physically present, it could be the subject of discussion, it may be a symbol. For instance, one story about the colour "green" had to do with an introverted person who joined a theatre troupe in order to overcome their shyness and meet more people, the entirety of the action of the story took place in the green room behind the theatre stage where they prepared to take the lead. Another story about the colour red had to do with the marital symbolism of the colour and how embracing it as a single woman became a path to empowerment.
b. Your Firsts.
What was your first relationship? When was your first kiss? Who was your first pet? How was your first time attending a 12-person orgy? The benefit of the "first" prompts is that your memories are most vivid around the first time you did certain things, they may not be your most interesting pieces, but they will do well to demonstrate the directions in which you could be thinking.
c. A Series of Symbols.
Make a list of objects in your life — ones you currently have in your possession or ones that you may have lost/given away — that have sentimental value. Write a series of pieces, personal essays or creative non-fiction, centred around these objects. You can use the story to practise developing a linear narrative or as an excersise in expanding symbolism. Regardless, this exercise is designed for you to access your emotionality and tie it to the physical representation of this emotionality. Explore relationships through the amaranthine metaphors enabled by a purple action figure from your childhood. Develop pain into a character through a ring returned at the end of a long marriage. Find the story of the symbol, the one that is personal to you, and how it ties into the world around you. In a similar manner you can also use other prompts like:
- The seasons.
- Various cities that you have visited.
The purpose of prompts is to exercise your writing muscles and discover your writing style. It is not necessarily to create pieces that are ready to sell or pitch, but to discover where the joy of writing lies for you, and to identify the literary techniques you most enjoy employing. Approach the use of prompts in a manner similar to doing crosswords because you like words, it won't win you a Pulitzer, but it's sharpening a muscle that may help.
- The Still Life Method
When you are completely unable to write especially because you do not know how to begin, start by picture a screenshot of any aspect of the world or your life. Maybe you were in a salon the previous day, maybe you were in a Turkish cafe five years ago, maybe you're in a particularly colourful room. Begin by creating a verbal image of this space and its ongoings in a manner similar to how a painter would create a still-life image.
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Tips For Developing and Disciplining Your Writing.
1. Developing A Practise.
As such discipline is an urge that often eludes creatives and it becomes one of the biggest roadblocks to productivity as a creative. You have to begin by accepting that disciplining your writing routines and habits will not be a pleasant process and certainly not one that is instantly rewarding. Much like developing the discipline for a physical practise, the suffering comes first in developing a writing practise. The only reward, in this phase, is the joy of writing itself (which is how it should be, eh?).
The following help to develop a practice:
- Set deadlines and goals for yourself.
- Do not wait for the urge or the inspiration to write in order to do it, institute a routine that is informed by who you are as a person and follow it. Good writing often preserves the essence of inspiration by harnessing it through consideration, practise and skill. Store inspiration in ideas, write when you are least likely to be overwhelmed by the emotion of inspiration.
- Find a writing partner. Having another person to report to makes it easier and more likely that you will stick to deadlines. Having an audience will also make it more likely that you will finish what you have started.
- Liberate yourself from the burden of unnecessary habits. You want to write only with a pen on a notepad? Well, what happens when you force yourself to write on a computer instead? Patterns and self-imposed limitations can sometimes become the hurdles we must circumvent in order to move past the thousands of little blocks we have created. Don't let the rituals surrounding your writing practice limit when you can and cannot write.
2. Identify What You Are Writing.
It's not only the subject matter that presents the challenge, very often the issue is not "what am I writing about" but "what am I writing". It could be a personal essay, a short story, an essay, a journal, creative non-fiction, a descriptive article, a novel, a speech etc. Decide what you are writing before you begin because it will guide your direction more than subject-matter. Even if your goal as a writer is to disrupt the conventions of an established genre, knowing the conventions is vital to the process. You have to know the rules to break them.
3. Get An Audience.
As noble as it sounds to write "only for yourself," you will not become a great writer through the path of nobility. If the purpose of art is to make a statement, it cannot exist in silence. Make the noise you need to make. The reward system, whether that is one reader or ten thousand, will give you the dopamine you need to keep going. As an aside though, do not let the audience dictate what it is you write, your voice as a writer should develop while you are writing and not when you are basking in the validation of people, but there is no shame in seeking validation, popularity, acceptance or even glory. Accepting the sensibility of an artist can be a process as fraught as accepting your sexuality, but if you have enough of an urge to write that you take a class on it, you have the urge to be known for it as well. How does that make you feel?
4. Use your own writing to inform what you want to write about next.
5. Live as a writer.
Add a lens of perspective to your observation of the world. This is a method that won't be rewarding immediately, but once you incorporate a practise of approaching the world through the mindset of writing it, you will begin to see commas, themes and character development all around you. The world is a lot easier to write when you decrypt it into words as you experience it.
6. Finally, indulge in verbosity and silliness.
That strange voice inside you that wants to make a silly comment in the middle of a serious plot? Let it. The desire to write two paragraphs explaining something? Indulge it. Your first draft can contain all of the parts of you that you worry are too silly, not literary enough, too weird, too simple or too complex. Reading your first drafts will teach you how to decipher what to keep and what to erase. It will also help you find your voice, it's often the part of you that you are suppressing because it doesn't sound like a writer.
Good luck!
