The Effects ~ Part II

Becoming an author in order to get rich is like going to the desert in order to become wet.~ J.E. Fishman
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Words, they all have an affect. Sometimes when they spew from our mouth, we wished we could just take them back but too late, they’re out and like a missile, have fired in someone’s direction and possibly hit hard or missed the intended target to begin with.

This is why I like writing so much, because often I can take back what I spewed, erase, delete, revise, whatever the case may be, and do a re-write. Writing gives me that freedom and although I don’t always catch a mistake, I often have an extra set of eyes who will read my work and point out, either a typo or something not quite understood.

Writing is an uplifting part of my day where dreams and mysteries collide, word and worlds convene, fiction and reality merge to become either a story or a message that I need to convey to the unsuspecting reader, or the reader who needs to read those words right at the time I say them.

You can’t imagine the affect that writing has had on the world. It seems that the written word has been somehow chiseled into our history since the days of Noah when someone was penning the words of the Bible. Can you imagine, a chisel? Then the pen/feather quill came and more and more words were written and in time writing was having an affect on all peoples from generation to generation.

Before there could ever be a movie made on any subject, before we had cassette players to read for us, before the camera could collect an image for us, we had writing. Writing, to me, shaped the world and began a flow of intelligence that was and never will be stopped, in the mission to make us a more brilliant species.

So as you write your post it notes, send out Christmas cards, pen the all American novel, send love to the ones afar, remember you are writing and as the masters before you, you are going to have an affect on each and every person who reads your words; so make each word count!

A writer is born every second that we breathe, an artist is created and he/she will change the world in one way or another. We all would like to think we have an affect on someone else, but there is no other like the writer that can affect someone more. Long live the writer!

Newcomers

"And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men;
knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance; for ye
serve the Lord Christ." Colossians 3:23-24
***

I have to admit, watching new writers makes me smile. They are just like I was about eight or nine years ago when I began to take this journey seriously; alive with creativity bubbling over their cup. Oozing with frothiness, layers of imagination whipped up for the course.

Some newcomers I sit in awe of as they have a natural ability to putting pen to paper and creating a dashing piece of art, not just words in a novel. The most fun part of being a new writer is learning. Learning new words, new techniques, grabbing ideas, tapping at the keyboard into the wee hours of the night, and being one with a new character. But the most fulfilling, is completion, I have to say.

Although when you complete your novel, you’re sitting there scratching your head wondering what to do next. We can’t go back and do revisions, it is too fresh in our minds, we won’t see anything wrong at least until a week later. So what is a writer to do?

Start a new story, new style, learn new words, different techniques. There’s a world of knowledge to be gleaned from the writing pool. As I sit in the stages of revising my nearly sixty thousand word novel, which will more than likely be more after revision, I think of where all this writing began.

Like many before me, writing was and is a part of  every day living, always has been and always will be. It began at a young age when I first held a pencil, albeit a fat one, in my tiny hand and began doodling. Ahh, fresh untouched paper, like a newly fallen snow with not one footprint, a firm wooden pencil clutched in my hand like the baby-blankie I gripped in the other hand; scribbling thoughts that surfaced, images, words, the love of pencil and paper began. Those were the good old days.

As I grew, the words took on new meaning, they shaped either a poem or a story and all throughout school, before I ever typed on a computer and had the luxury of internet access, I was born to write. I didn’t stumble upon the written word and think, “Hey, this is cool.” No, I read, read and read some more. Wrote, wrote and continued studying the craft of writing, all throughout my childhood and early adult years.

After my hand developed callus's from writing, my hands ached from the old style typewriter, then out of nowhere a computer fell into my lap and changed my world forever. That was almost nine years ago, and I still persist in writing, whether pen or keyboard, I still write.

The best advice I can give newcomers to the field, is persist. Don’t write for a year or two and give up, that does not make you a writer, nor just because you pen words on occasion, does it make you a writer. A writer exemplifies, PERSISTENCE! We’re a tough breed and I’ve learned that the writing community is more than a community of artists, it is a home away from home.

Welcome to the writing world F2k alumni! You completed lesson six, in the shroud of NANO, and now move on, to PERSISTENCE!

Writing...the journey that leads...

“Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.” - E. L. Doctorow

Just where does your writing journey begin and where does it end? Just where does all this lead? We sit at our desktop's typing out our words, spilling them onto paper, night after night, taking our character(s) on what seems an endless leg of walking only to find, it has to end somewhere right?

We writer’s are on the same journey as our characters. We flow like the stream, happenstance, like our plot, is built up to the point of high voltage, then we drop the bomb of conclusion and fall victim to an end.

Do any of you find that when you end your story, you find yourself sad because you had come alive via your characters and now they have come to a conclusion, and you wonder, where to next? We know we’re going to let it sit, for at least seven days before we pick it back up and go through scrutinizing and editing the piece, right?

If we’re lucky we might have a sequel to squelch the need to write or a story that preys on our mind until we have to get it out. Ever had a journey like that? If I didn’t have writing to get things off of my mind, or fictional worlds in which to climb, my life would be unbearably exhausting and insanity would ensue.

That’s what our writing needs to do. Build a world of insanity where we can plot, structure, form and mend all of our inner problems onto the paper of falseness. I say falseness because we’re not going to give our character a reality as close to our own now are we? 

The Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa has won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature. The Swedish Academy said that it was honoring the 74-year-old author "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt and defeat." ~The New York Times, 10/7/10

Through our writing we are allowed to give, shape and color our worlds. We are our character's god. We hold the pen of creation in our hand.  Did you read the above about the Nobel in Literature? ...structures of power and his trenchant images! Now THAT’S what I’m talking about. Images that brings your writing alive. Structure that shapes and forms into something believable. An entire world within your grasp.

Oh feel the power! Feel the pen! Release the artist within!

Pen and Paper

I was going to write my blog for today but you know, when you have a man and a son all vying for the computer at the same time, the writer in the house has a sudden inspiration, you kind of get sidetracked, give up the computer and move into a room with a pencil and paper.

We don’t push and shove one another off the computer; we try and show mere respect for one another. But by the time I’m ‘respected’ I’ve lost the inspiration that I initially had.

In this day and age with the computers at the hubbub of the writing world, it seems that the pen and paper has lost its luster. Snail mail is a term for your submissions to be sent via mail! Can you imagine, even the post office is considered obsolete these days. You do need to send mail don’t you?

I think of the men/women who penned lengthy novels all on paper. The determination and perseverance they must have had. No internal editor; no worrying if they spelled right; they just wrote! They never had a spell checker, they had editor’s. The days of pen and paper are gone, drifting off in some billowy cloud of smoke where I can’t seem to find it through the mire.

With my pen and paper, I can find a quiet spot, either inside or out, and write my to my hearts content. Sure my hand gets blisters, they also feel arthritic, but I persevere and move on like the writers of the past. I never did like losing sight of all that history has given to us. Now I need to regroup, take it all in and soar with my pen and paper.

Uh oh...I feel that inspiration churning. I better get outside under my shade tree and relish the morning sounds. With pen and paper in hand, I’m bound to get some writing done. No one will want to vie for THAT time. No one likes it under the tree but me and my critter friends scurrying about.

Remember, the pen and paper can be your best friends when you have a computer crash, a loss of Internet service, no connection to the outside world. You carry your notebook with you and when someone asks, “Hey, where you going?” You tell them, “I’m going to sit under the shade tree.” They’ll say, “Oh.” and think b-o-r-i-n-g!

But to you, it will be your meditative place to do what you love best and that my friends, is to WRITE!