The Inevitable Writer

At the weekend, I caught myself doing something that – I now realise – I’ve been doing all my life, without really appreciating its significance. It’s something that’s as natural to me as being, and it’s the reason why, I think, that I love to make up stuff that’s not true.

Photo Credit: pfv. via Compfight cc

I was in the company of one of my oldest friends on Saturday. He, his wife and their little girl were in attendance at a family event, and since it’s been some time since we’ve seen each other, we got talking. Inevitably, the conversation turned to work and what we were doing with our lives now, and he began to tell me about his professional life, his role at his workplace, and how he feels about his job.

As he spoke, my brain filled up with images – like I was watching a movie – and I saw my friend striding across an office landscape, making for a desk that turned out to be his, in a cubicle surrounded by several others, all of which were occupied. I saw him settling himself at his workstation, a photograph of his family beside his screen, and rolling up his sleeves as he got to work. It was as real as the surroundings we were sitting in; I felt like I was standing right behind his shoulder as he turned his computer on. However, all he was telling me was what he did for a living; he mentioned nothing about his work environment, what it looked like, whether he had colleagues in his immediate vicinity, whether he even worked in a cubicle – but my brain was busy filling in the gaps, nonetheless. I was fully engaged in listening to what he was saying, but another level of my mind was simultaneously telling his ‘story’.

It might sound strange, but it’s pretty much ‘all systems normal’ for me.

Whenever I am in a car, or a bus, or any vehicle really, I find myself being distracted by thinking about the houses and buildings that I’m passing. Who lives there? I ask. What are they like? What sort of house is it? I see buildings that, for whatever reason, will catch my imagination and I’ll let my mind’s eye flood with ideas about what would greet me if I walked up to the front door and opened it, what sort of hallway I’d see, the people I’d meet, the family dynamic they have. I am constantly burning with curiosity about the things I see – who built that? Why is this here? What was the point of that structure? – and sometimes I think it’s sad that I’m never going to see what it’s like inside the houses I’m passing, or meet the people who live in them and find out what their individual tales are. I wish I could see behind every door, peep through every window (not in a weird way, of course; simply out of curiosity! Don’t worry, neighbours – I don’t have telescopes trained on your domiciles right at this very moment MWAHAHAHAA… No, seriously, I don’t) and talk to the people I meet about their lives. But then I think that imagining these things, creating them for myself, is just as good. On an average bus journey, I’ve written a hundred stories in my head, all of which are ephemeral as dreams and which have faded away by the time I reach my destination – but the important thing is they existed, if only for a fleeting moment. It keeps my imagination-muscles primed and ready, and it lets my mind stretch, which means by the time it comes to actually creating stories I have plenty of brain-room to work with.

I think to be a writer you need a few things: an ability (nay, a compulsion) to work alone, on your own terms and entirely self-motivated; a strange mix of humility and utter delusion about your own ability; a comfortable chair; a supportive family; a background of reading; an ability to live on very little money, and – probably most importantly – a never-ending, insatiable curiosity about life, people, and stories, which will feed your imagination, which will then go on to create  worlds that seem better, in so many ways, than the reality you’re living in. So, daydreaming is a good thing. Time alone to think is a good thing. If you see someone’s eyes wander off while you’re talking to them, it doesn’t mean, necessarily, that you’re boring; maybe it means that what you’re saying has grabbed their mind, and that they’re busily imagining everything you’re telling them.

It could mean you’re boring, of course. But let’s pretend otherwise, just for fun…

Writer, Plain and Small

So, I’m reading a book at the moment – you know, in between sending out submissions, trying to write an actual book of my own, attempting to lay the foundations of a future business model and not (repeat: *not*) sliding down the helter-skelter of All The Crazy – and, as I came to the end of Chapter 5, something struck me like a haddock across the back of the head.

Just like this. *Exactly* like this, in fact.
Image: s1263.photobucket.com

I am a really boring person.

No – no, wait! Just hear me out on this one.

Okay, so the author of the book I’m reading is vastly younger than I am. Her author bio at the start of the book lists the year she was born – a year I remember well, because I spent most of it covered in glitter and scrunchies, singing along to Cyndi Lauper and falling out of trees. I had years of living under my belt by then, during which time I could’ve been doing stuff like starting research toward my first Nobel Prize or being a child prodigy at something besides jumping in cowpats or, even, stowing away on board a ship to see the world. Instead, I was reading everything I could get my hands on, exploring rockpools at every given opportunity and actively avoiding having my hair washed for as long as I could get away with.

Oh, the missed opportunities.

To make matters worse, this author person is an elected fellow of an Oxford college. Already. At her exceptionally young age.

But, the nadir of it all is that the book I’m reading is not her début, and she is – and I quote: ‘currently working on her doctorate alongside an adult novel.’

Right, so I did a doctorate. That’s not a secret. And, it therefore follows that I know how darn complicated it is to write one. I didn’t do mine at Oxford, either – doing anything at Oxford is bound to be fifty-squillion-kazillion times more difficult than it would be anywhere else, because Standards, don’tcha know.

And this person’s doing all that – as well as writing an adult novel and as well as publishing two children’s novels? Oh, and did I mention she grew up – in Africa?

Crying Girl, Roy Lichtenstein (1963)
Image: en.wikipedia.org

What have I been doing with my life?

I have always lived in one country, and it’s a rather small and squishy one, at that. I haven’t travelled much. I’ve experienced the whole gamut of human emotion, sure, but then you can say the same of anyone. Well, anyone who isn’t a sociopath, at least. I am an ordinary girl in an ordinary corner of the world.

But do you think a person can be too ordinary to be a writer?

Does it follow that a person who grew up in the savannahs of Africa, or the steppes of Mongolia, or the frozen wastes of Siberia, or in the hissing eternity of a desert is going to have a wider imaginative base to draw upon than a person who grew up in a tiny terraced house on a nineteenth-century street in a small Irish country town? A person with the self-confidence, talent and gumption to have published two books by their early- to mid-twenties, alongside doing a doctorate at Oxford, is going to be a more interesting person than one who worked in a succession of dead-end jobs before her health started to fail, and who then took a crazy chance on following a dream, surely. A person who has travelled is, don’t you agree, necessarily going to be better placed at writing imaginatively than a person whose only real engagement with the world has been through reading about far-flung places?

Maybe.

Then, I have felt the Adriatic breeze on my face from the walls of the old town of Dubrovnik; I have heard the Liberty Bell ring out across the city of Valletta. I have seen the sunlight sparkling on the river Leie as I walked through the beautiful city of Ghent. I have watched the Eiffel Tower lit up with spotlights from the smallest hotel room in Paris, and I’ve seen the Mona Lisa. I’ve done more than some, this is true.

But I still feel inadequate, or somehow unequal, in comparison to a person whose life experiences are so richly different from mine.

However, maybe it’s also important to remember that there’s no restriction on imagination. So, I’ve never lived in Africa, and I have never seen most of the places I dream about. I’ve never been to Scandinavia. I’ve never seen the Northern Lights. I’ve never been to Rome. But that doesn’t mean I can’t dream about all these things, and create them in my mind. Perhaps it’s not so much what you’ve done in the time you’ve had, but what sort of thinker you are – one who looks out towards the rest of creation and embraces it with an open heart, or one who locks themselves away in a fit of pique, refusing to open their eyes. One who is too involved with themselves to see the wonder of others.

I’d like to think I am definitely the former.

Image: saligiastock.deviantart.com

My small, plain life might not stack up against that of the author of my current book-crush. She has, it’s true, lived more in her years than I have in mine. But that doesn’t mean that my story is invalid just because she has chosen to tell hers; it doesn’t mean that my dreams have to take a back seat to anyone else’s. Our experiences shape our minds and the breadth of what we can imagine, but it’s what we choose to do with what we have that counts.

So, I choose to let this story inspire me – not only the book itself, but also the lesson I’ve learned from the life of its author – and I choose to respect the experiences I’ve had, be they ever so humble, because they are my unique gift to the world.

And the same goes for all of us.

Sisyphus – I Feel your Pain, Man

It’s the twelfth of December. Say what?

Image: funnyjunk.com

Santa is, indeed, coming. So is the end of the year, which is a lot less pleasant to think about.

You may remember – mainly because I went on and on and on about it – that I completed NaNoWriMo this year. That means I wrote 50,000 words in less than 30 days. However, I’m beginning to wonder if I dreamed the whole thing, because it’s now been nearly two weeks since NaNoWriMo finished, and since then I’ve written about 9,000 words, tops. I sit down at my computer, and open up my document, and I scroll to the spot where I left off last time.

And I feel like this.

Image: scienceblogs.com

Getting through the work, day by day by day, is akin to strapping on a pair of cement boots and taking a brisk walk up the Matterhorn. It’s just so hard, and I don’t understand why.

Consider these points:

1. I have plenty of story left. I am nowhere near the conclusion of this book, and I know (in a broad sense) what I want to happen. It’s just a matter of getting there.

2. This feeling of mental block only happens when I’m actually at my desk. I was out for a walk yesterday, f’rinstance, and found my head filling up with ideas and enthusiasm and sheer delight at the thought of returning to my story, and so I galloped home. All that enthusiasm took a nosedive out the window as soon as the computer was switched back on, though. Does this make sense?

3. I really want to get this draft finished by the end of the year. I just can’t countenance the idea of bringing it over into 2014. Normally, when I am determined like this, I just knuckle down and get it done. Normally. But something – alors! – is not normal, these days.

It seems as though the story has become turgid, and floppy, and bland. It seems like my words are banal and meaningless and ‘seen it all before.’ Perhaps this is a side-effect of having had such a forced intimacy with the work for the past six weeks or so; maybe I simply need a break from it, and a change of focus.

But, at the same time, I don’t want a break from it. I want to finish it. I want to get through it, because I’m afraid that if I leave it alone too long I won’t ever see it through, and that would be breaking the first rule – the most important rule – of writing, which is: Finish Your Work. You can’t do a second draft of an incomplete first draft, so grinding to a halt now would be, in terms of Emmeline and Thing and their story, a disaster.

I believe there’s potential in this story. I really love the characters, and I like how the plot has, to a large extent, woven itself around them. It has taken a few unexpected turns, and ideas have suggested themselves to me as I wrote, which is an exhilarating feeling. But now I’m coming close to the End – I’m within 10,000 words of the conclusion to this story, by any rational calculation – and Endings have always been hard for me.

I read a book recently (a review will be posted in a couple of weeks’ time) which was a flight of extraordinary fancy. It did a few things which irritated me, namely introducing characters at the last minute who happen to have just the right power to get the protagonist out of a sticky situation, relying a little on coincidence and ‘extraordinary strokes of luck’ (my teeth go on edge when I read a phrase like this), but it did one other thing, which taught me – or perhaps, reminded me of – an important lesson. It demonstrated the power of a free and full imagination. This particular book went places which no other children’s book I’ve ever read has gone, and I found that refreshing and exciting.

It made me wonder why I constantly clamp down on my own imagination, telling myself that a scene in whatever I’m working on couldn’t possibly happen – it’s too far-fetched, and not realistic enough, and nobody would ever believe it.

Image: badideatshirts.com

But isn’t that sort of the point?

I’m not saying that child readers will believe any old rubbish, because – of course – I am passionately aware that isn’t true. But what they need are books which explore the limits of what a writer can imagine. They want to read things they’ve never read before, and they want to be surprised, and they want to be gripped, and they want to care about the characters. They want to be amused, probably more than anything else. They want descriptions which are good enough, and clear enough, that they seem effortlessly done; at the same time, these descriptions cannot be allowed to get in the way of their reading enjoyment, or stop them imagining themselves in the place of the hero. They want a world which is internally logical and consistent, which holds together and doesn’t break any of its own rules – but, after that, if you want to bring in talking elephants or pink trees or whatever it is, and they make sense in the world you’ve written, then there’s no reason why you should hesitate. Yet – when it comes to some of my own more ‘out-there’ ideas, that’s exactly what I’m doing. Why is applying the lessons I’ve learned from years of reading, enjoying and dissecting children’s books such a challenging thing?

Every day I sit down at this book, I spend the first hour or two unpicking most of what I wrote the previous day. Progress is painfully slow. I am getting there – and I hope I’ll make it before my ‘deadline’ hits – but I hope I’ll remember to give myself the space I need to let the story live. I’ll have to remind myself not to be afraid of where the story wants to go, and to give it the freedom to do what it wants to do. I have to trust myself to handle it.

Otherwise, I think the boulder’s going to start rolling back so fast that I won’t be able to stop it, and it’ll crush me to a pulp.

And nobody wants to see that, right?

The Long Game

I’m starting to realise that writing is one of these ‘lifelong learning’ things, and that peskily, it’s something at which it’s always possible to improve. At the same time, it’s something most people will never perfect, not because they’re not talented, but because writing can never truly be perfected. Due to its very nature, and the subjective reality of its reception by readers, I don’t think there’ll ever be a piece of writing that is considered the definition of sublime accomplishment by every single person who comes across it.

In some ways, this is comforting. In others, it’s infuriating beyond measure.

The more of it you do – writing, that is – the better you get. At least, this is the slender hope upon which my existence hangs. This means that, while your chances of writing success are pretty poor at the beginning of your writing career, it’s possible to imagine that your best work is always ahead of you. There is, undeniably, something exciting about that.

Image: coaching-journey.com

I am learning, every day, what writing is all about. I’m learning that having an idea is a vastly different thing to making something out of it, and I’m finding out the truth of the maxim ‘an easy read is a difficult write.’

So. Here follows a short list of some of the things I’ve learned recently about writing, and how I do it, and what works for me.

Don’t be overly descriptive

This might seem strange, and wrong, and horrifying to some people, readers and writers alike. What makes a work come alive more keenly than acutely observed detail, you might say? What’s the point of reading a book if nothing is described? Would it be a book at all?

Well. Let’s think about it a bit more, shall we?

Descriptive language is something that can turn me off a book, without a doubt. I am all for describing just enough to give the reader a sense of something, and then letting their imaginations fill in any gaps. Books, in some ways, should be interactive: they shouldn’t be a closed system, complete in and of themselves, and completely sealed off from a reader. How alienating is that? I think a book should give a reader’s experience enough breathing room to bring a story to life, and overdoing description can kill that vitality in its tracks.

Also, it depends on what you’re writing. If your book is set on a distant planet seven centuries from now, then you’ll have to think carefully about your descriptions, and also about your comparisons. There’s no point in saying ‘her hair was the colour of a beautiful sunset’ in a book like that, for instance – while ‘a beautiful sunset’ might mean something to a present-day reader, it might mean nothing to a character in the year 2813. Do they live underground? Is the sky full of a steel-grey cloud from centuries of pollution? Do they even have eyes, or do they navigate their planet using sonar? Do people even have hair any more? You get the drift. If you describe something in terms that would be meaningless to your character, then you’re dragging your reader out of the world you’ve created and ruining the spell of your novel.

This is really easy to forget and all too easy to do, and it can be disastrous for your writing. Of course. Nothing in this game is ever easy.

Also, don’t describe everything in exhaustive detail, particularly not things which can safely be assumed to be familiar to a reader, like the smell of grass or the taste of a common foodstuff or the feeling of sand underfoot or whatever. There are things which need lots of elaboration, and things that don’t. If you describe everything to the nth degree, a reader’s eye will start to skip, and they’ll get bored. You don’t want that.

Don’t be overly proscriptive

This is the flip-side of the first point, in some ways. If you over-describe, then you close off a host of ways of thinking to your reader. Don’t prohibit your reader from bringing their own experience and reality to what you’ve written, and don’t deny them the ability to make it real for them, in their terms. Once you make a piece of writing public, you allow a reader to make what they want of it, no matter what it is you meant by it, or what your artistic vision intended.

Make clever use of dialogue and exposition

Something which irritates me in books is exposition which isn’t handled properly. This can happen when a character explains something to another character in a way which is clearly designed to do nothing but give information to the reader, or when a character simply addresses the reader to give them a Vital Plot Point. When I read dialogue between characters in which they tell one another things which they really shouldn’t have to – i.e. things that, in the world of the story, they should know without having to be told – it really makes me grind my teeth. This is clearly a ploy to bring the reader up to speed, and it should, where possible, be avoided. I also hate characters describing themselves to a reader by looking in a mirror or at a photograph of themselves and bemoaning their freckles/curly hair/straight hair/lack of teeth, or whatever the case may be; I’d much rather not know what a character is supposed to look like, and bring my own imagination to bear on the matter, than have it described to me like this.

Until yesterday, I had a whole chunk of clumsy exposition in ‘Tider’, at a point where our heroine is explaining to the reader what, exactly, her father does for a living (hint: it’s bad); it existed as a big monstrous lump of direct explanation, and it had always bothered me. Yesterday, I turned it into a piece of dialogue between our heroine and her best friend. Now, not only is there a hint of humour in there, but also a sense of the depth and importance of their friendship, and a subtle pointer towards the development of the best friend’s character, too – which came to me, naturally, as I wrote their dialogue. Conversations have a tendency to do that, I guess – develop organically, and go in all manner of unforeseen directions. This is why they’re brilliant, if they’re used properly in fiction. Make sure to have the characters ask one another questions which are sensible and intelligent, and which they wouldn’t already know the answers to; not only will this help to advance your plot, but it will also add another layer to your characters.

Oh, and – I managed to get as much information about my heroine’s father across in this piece of dialogue as I had done in the big, ugly, clunky, irritating paragraph that had been there before. It just looks and reads a whole lot better now.

As a writer, you’re always learning how to improve, and the beauty (and pain) of the job is there’s always improvin’ to be done. The only thing a person really needs to be aware of as they’re starting out in this wordsmithing game is that improving enough to please yourself can take a lifetime.

If something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right… and for the rest of your life.
Image: sodahead.com

Occupational Hazards

As a writer (for, even though I have not yet been paid to do it, that is what I consider myself to be), I spend a lot of time alone. I focus intently on a screen for hours on end, and I am – most of the time – lost inside my own head. A lot of the people in my life do not actually exist.

This, while wonderful, can lead to a few problems.

Actually, if you think about it, there are loads of drawbacks to having an active imagination. One of these drawbacks is that you see things everywhere. By ‘things’, of course, I don’t mean things like tables and chairs and spoons, and so on, or any of the detritus one might expect to see in any normal house; I mean things like the flicker of shadow in the corner of your eye which could be a) next door’s cat, b) an errant eyelash, c) a serial killer hiding behind the ironing board, d) a vengeful ghost or e) your own addled brain trying to drive you crazy. Perhaps all of the above. When this happens on a daily (or, perhaps, regular) basis, it is enough to fray one’s nerves, just a little.

Telling myself that bad stuff doesn’t happen to people in their houses doesn’t help much, either. Proof to the contrary abounds.

Image: movieramblings.com

I tend to be a jumpy sort at the best of times. I’m a terrible person to watch any sort of frightening film with, even one which is only mildly scary, because not only do I spook easily but I also tend to scream and/or weep at the most inappropriate places. Scenes in a movie which would make a normal person laugh with derision will have me under the sofa, gibbering in terror. When one combines this with my, frankly, overactive imagination, then things can get a little hairy. It also doesn’t help that I’m on my own a lot; when I’m with other people, I can control my irrational fears out of a sense of propriety. When alone, my terrors have full rein.

I’ve been convinced, so many times, that I’ve seen the reflection of someone sneaking up on me in my computer screen. Imagine my embarrassment, then, when I whirl around in a karate stance ready to thump my ‘assailant’, only to find nothing there. Nearly every time I pass our kitchen window I tell myself there’s someone in the garden, but it’s just the shadow cast by the shed; whatever way it falls, it lands on my eye like a marauder, waiting to pounce. Most times when I pass the spare room, I am convinced there’s someone sitting in the chair – but there never is, of course, because it’s impossible. Every creak is someone breaking in; whenever the phone rings, I hit the ceiling.

It’s ridiculous. Being aware of it makes it seem even more ridiculous, if that makes sense.

Having said all this, I don’t mean to paint a picture of myself as some sort of Victorian-era lady, living on her nerves, clutching her scented handkerchief to her powdered nose, and spending every day in a paroxysm of horror. When I’m totally absorbed in what I’m doing, and when a story has me gripped tight in its claws, I tend not to let anything distract me – not even reflections which could be stranglers creeping up on my unassuming back, their fingernails dripping with blood, or strange dark shapes in the corners of my vision which could be an intruder lying in wait (but which are, most likely, a bag full of old clothes which I haven’t got around to recycling yet, or something similar). Perhaps, sometimes, when I’m tired or my focus is not quite right or something isn’t working in the story, I allow myself to get dragged out of my fictional world, just a little; my imagination is still on overdrive, though, and so I see and hear and smell things that aren’t real, for a short while.

At least, that’s what I tell myself.

Image: spectrumculture.com

All this is another reason why it’s important for us solitary workers to get out and see the world a little every day. If I’m going to be talking to myself and muttering at shadows, I might as well do it outdoors and get some fresh air at the same time.

Happy Thursday. I hope your day is slightly less neurotic, and equally as productive, as mine!

 

Wednesday Write-In #53

This week’s words were:

tide  ::  short-sighted  ::  reflective  ::  apocalypse  ::  gloom

This is the first week I really struggled with my Wednesday Write-In! I’d written another story altogether, but decided to scrap it at the last second. I replaced it with this one, which I’m still not sure is entirely a good idea…

 

Judgement Day

‘An apocalypse,’ he’d told me once, ‘is an unveiling. An uncovering. A hidden truth being brought to the surface.’

Yes, I’d thought. And then what?

The gloom in here was suffocating. All our exhalations, coming together like a tide, in and out, filling the air with gentle death. Every breath taken felt like a mountain climbed.

Someone, somewhere, was singing. Show me, O Lord, the Glory of Thy Face… Then, the voice threaded away to nothing, absorbed into the darkness as if it had never existed at all.

There had always been too many of us. We’d had to make the best of what we had, but it was never enough. Every year there’d be more women, more babies, more mouths, more filth, more work, but it was all for the glory, so I bent my back to the task. I laboured in the vineyard of the Lord, but it didn’t seem to matter.

‘I have been short-sighted in my obedience to His will,’ he’d announced one day. ‘He has provided, but I have been greedy.’ A reflective silence followed, during which we studied our hearts and explored our souls, and concluded that we were unworthy to keep living.

I can still hear the grinding click of the key in the lock. He shut us in here, and then he drove away.

‘An apocalypse,’ he’d taught us, ‘is an ending, and a beginning.’

Yes, I thought. But for whom?

 

Image: benchasephoto.com

 

Imagination

Well, good morning.  I’m feeling a bit better today – a little bit stronger, a little bit more settled.  I hope the writing will flow a little easier today.  The going has been slow for the past few weeks on my WiP, partly due to the fact that I’ve been distracted by real life a little more than normal, but today I hope I’ll have a focused day.  *crosses fingers*

I’m thinking about imagination this morning, perhaps due to the fact that both my husband and myself had extremely detailed – and remarkably similar – dreams last night; we both dreamed about natural disasters, oddly enough.  In his case it was a volcanic eruption, and in mine it was a landslide, which I could ‘see’ as clearly as if it was happening three feet away from me.  It started me off thinking about the human brain, its capacity to imagine and dream, and how or why we place limits on our minds, sometimes.

I’m engaged in a battle with the climax of my book at the moment.  My characters are right in the middle of one of the big showdowns, and as I was writing yesterday I actually kept thinking ‘I can’t write that.  It sounds ridiculous.  I have to scale that back a little, surely.’  I caught myself doing this just as I had come up with something really interesting – and something I’d certainly never seen or read before – and it was enough to bring my work to a complete stop.  It was like I’d reached an impasse with myself.  My creative brain wanted to forge ahead and write this idea to its fullest, but my logical brain scoffed at it, almost as if it was afraid to break new ground, and decided it wasn’t happening.  I still haven’t resolved this argument, but I think I’ll revisit the issue today and hope my creative brain is a bit stronger than it was yesterday, and better able to stand up for itself.

This morning, after my husband and I realised we’d both had amazing dreams, I started to think again about imagination, and the freedom involved in letting it loose.  I wondered, too, why I’d stopped myself using my imagination yesterday.  In my dream last night, I surfed down a landslide as if it was a wave and I was a champion surfer, and my ‘rational’ brain had no objection.  It was all pure imagination, pure creative brain, and it felt wonderful to let it loose.  When it comes to writing, though, I regularly feel as though I’m urging myself to hold back, to explain everything, to make sure everything ‘makes sense’, to take care, to go slowly… it causes me great stress and anxiety, sometimes.  I’m all in favour of just writing, getting the story out, and then going back to ‘fix’ things later – I just can’t seem to do it myself.  I got myself so wrapped up in knots a few weeks ago trying to sort out some of the technology being used in my fictive world that I nearly drove myself to drink.  It didn’t occur to me for days that this is my world: I created this place, and it can run whatever way I want it to.  When I did finally realise that, it was as if I’d been allowed to take a deep breath after weeks of wearing a too-tight corset.  Once I’d given myself that freedom, the scene started to work as if by magic – I sorted out the technology, it was all fine, and the work proceeded easily.

You’d think I’d learn from that experience, but it seems not.  Here I am doing it to myself again.

So, I am going to learn from my dreams today.  Let your imagination run free, and see where it takes you.  Remember that writing is supposed to be fun.  It’s supposed to be about creativity and self-expression, as well as the challenge of creating a story and a world that ‘works’ and holds itself together.  I need to remember the bits about fun and creativity – the rest, as I’ve seen, will follow on naturally.  It makes sense that allowing your brain the freedom to breathe creatively will help your work – I just keep allowing myself to forget that part!

If you’re writing (or even if you’re not), good luck with whatever your brain is trying to get up to today.  And remember – your brain knows more than you think!