This will never be any sort of high powered, heavily trafficked site, this I know. I don’t write the right kind of stuff, at the right pace, and I don’t do promotions (yet.) But that is no reason not to get things together and in place for what the site could be. So…

When I was considering what I wanted from this space, what I wanted it to help me do, the answer that came was “to take myself seriously.”

Well. And what does that mean, you may ask? I know that was the question uppermost in my mind. I think–and I have to do more thinking on this as well–that it pretty much means what it says. I’ve never really taken myself seriously, especially as a writer/thinker. It’s always been “I’m not this, or as good as that, so I can’t be or do whatever it is that I have this burning to do.” Or something like that. I think I’ve mentioned before that I am probably the best at discouraging myself.

I’m not going to do that this time, though. I just have to figure out what taking myself seriously means, which actually will fit in with what I have planned, because one of those plans includes a book series. Not the fiction book (though I am writing that, too) but more of a recreating your life series of ebooks. My intention is to write it mostly on here, and then gather parts together, add extras and pop it up on one of the ebook sites. Or, maybe shop it around to agents or at least to readers and see what they think.

Then, of course, I will be blathering on about writing fiction, things I am learning as I go along, pointers and links to books and authors and other related items. I want to do this not only so other people can benefit, but as an aid to keeping myself on track. That may be a bit counter-intuitive, keeping myself on my book writing track by writing other things, but I think it may work out for me. If I write about doing character interviews, or writing the book of myths and so on in one month–I won’t want the next month or two to go by without actually doing what I’ve said I was doing. So, progress reports to myself and the public will keep me from getting stuck in the weeds of preparation, I think.

Anyway, on the site itself I need to reorganize the categories and pare them down to, at the most, six. Or maybe eight. Just a few, anyway.

First things first, and all that.

I’ve not been writing here over the past few days anyway, though of course I intend to start again. My life is a bit more in flux than usual at the moment, however, and that crimps my writing sometimes. Not that I can’t write when things are iffy, it’s just that I tend to want to howl and whine and sigh about things and that’s pretty boring. Even more boring than my normal scribbles!

The scribbling is good, though, I think. And far more productive, idea wise anyway, done here than on a separate site. Sometimes I stop myself from just keeping going and writing whatever comes to mind, not only to spare anyone reading but also to sort of conserve the ideas that pop up. After this weekend I’ll either be settled or, well, not and I can concentrate on more formal or professional type stuff. And the book, of course.

Anyway–Monday, Monday.

It’s interesting–and sometimes tragic–what life does to creativity. Pictures have been going through my mind this morning of when I was young. Very young, pre-teens. If I didn’t have a book in my hands, I had a sketch pad or any blank piece of paper so that I could draw, sometimes out of my imagination but often trying to capture figures and forms from the book of paintings I had. My other constant was a pad and paper, or a notebook, or whatever I could find, so that I could write stories.

I remember one story in particular because I showed it to my mom and though her face blanched a little, she praised it like she did all my work. I grew up in Hollywood in the midst of the hippie generation and free love and all that and though I didn’t talk a lot, I listened closely to my older brother’s friends and to various adults and, of course, to other children. So my story was filled with sex (as far as I understood it at the time — I was about 9 or 10) and free love, and people sharing partners, men partnering with men and women with women, then sometimes switching off and all sorts of fun things. I had no idea at the time what gay, lesbian or bisexual was, but as my brother was gay and many of his friends also, it was just a natural part of life and relationships to me.

(I think, sometimes, people think I’m a bit of a prude because I rarely enter into the conversations about sex and sexuality and orgasms and all that. But it’s not prudishness, mostly; it’s boredom. Not only was I surrounded by peace and love and sexual freedom and all that during most of my childhood, for part of the time I attended a “free school”, Summerhill, where pretty much anything went, everyone talked about everything and any questions you had were answered, even if you never asked them.

Every generation “discovers” sex, but the generation before me not only discovered it, they never shut up about it. I was bored to tears with the topic by the time I hit my mid teens. Now, if it’s not happening to me, I simply don’t care.)

Anyway, I don’t have the story anymore and I’m pretty sure I’d die laughing if I read it today, but my mom… she just read it and smiled and told me I did a wonderful job. She never discouraged any of my art or creativity, or that of my brother. I don’t know what happened that I came to the conclusion that creating, in those ways, was not only a waste of time, but that I wasn’t any good at it. I don’t recall anyone actually telling me that, so I must have been the one to tell myself. Which is not surprising–I’m really good at discouraging myself.

But still, the creative instinct had to go somewhere. Once I got online it came out in the building of sites and communities. I loved it, and always had so many ideas of what to do. I wanted to build the perfect sites, and have them do this and that and the other thing. Even when one was done, I’d want to add this, or change that, or have this happen — why can’t this happen, and that do this instead?

In other words, I’m pretty sure I drove a number of people working with me absolutely batty. I love new ideas, but I don’t like to stick with them all the time. I like to put them out there and move on to the next new idea. Great if I had a lot of money or investors and people who wanted to do something but don’t know what to do. Not so great if you are me and my one friend who is willing to help me implement things (poor thing, she’s gotten the brunt of my “why don’t we do this!?” stuff.)

But… now that I have rediscovered writing, and have decided that, yes, I can write fiction, I realized something. This, I think, is what I have been looking for, and have been missing all this time. I am creating a world right now and having so much fun. And if I decide that this part of the world needs this, and doesn’t really need that anymore, it’s simply a matter of getting rid of one thing and writing another. I can let my imagination soar, change things on a whim, come up with new ideas every day and write them in and do all sorts of things all by myself.

I’m going to write about that (in non-scribbling form) and also about some of the things a wonderful commenter, Ivan, has been saying in the comments to this post. So much to think about, and I am so encouraged now.

I’ve long been inspired by an idea I first learned about in The Artist’s Way called morning pages. Morning pages are three pages of writing done every day, typically encouraged to be in “long hand”, typically done in the morning, that can be about anything and everything that comes into your head. It’s about getting it all out of your head, and is not supposed to be edited or censored in any way. The idea is that if you can get in the habit of writing three pages a day, that it will help clear your mind and get the ideas flowing for the rest of the day. Unlike many of the other exercises in that book, I found that this one actually worked and was really really useful.

It’s a good idea and a fun site. I started doing it again and was on a 13 day streak of writing over 750 per day – then something happened and I couldn’t (or simply did not want to, maybe) write for three or four days. And, I think like the last time I started and stopped, it was because it really wasn’t working for me.

Apparently I have very little brain to dump in the mornings, so most of what I was doing was getting anything in there at all so that I could meet the word count. I tried writing at different times of the day to see if would be more effective, say, at night when it would be supposed that my brain would be a little more crowded. No go! That word count was still in the back of my mind and I would keep looking to see how far I had gotten.

Worst thing about it is, it really hasn’t freed up anything in my mind so that I can write elsewhere. Like here. It just takes up the little time I have for personal writing before I get into the weeds of drudgery writing. So, while I like the idea of the site, and even like participating, I think it’s just not for me at this point in time. I have decided, in fact, (again, I think) that I will just inflict my morning scribbles, disconnected thoughts and story ideas on everyone, instead writing them down on a private, disconnected site. It’s not as if I write anything really private–I have for years been of the belief that nothing you put online is really private. And in recent years that’s pretty much been borne out, I believe, with all the privacy violations of Facebook, Google, so on. I rarely write anything online, no matter how private the space, that I would not mind shouted from the rooftops.

Anyway, just to let you know that anything tagged “scribbles” can safely be ignored by both of my readers, because they will be just disconnected, unedited (as if I edit anything else, either, lol) thoughts and scribbles.

So, this morning I kept scribbling and in the process came up with something to write about in a non-scribbling fashion. It came about because up above somewhere I’d written “at this point in time”, and I remembered that I always get dinged for that by grammar software. So I got to thinking about lazy language, and habits and all that, and that led to thinking about people I know who use language well. And I scribbled up some thoughts about all that.

It’s in drafts now (otherwise known as “The Black Hole”) but it is halfway done so I may finish it. It is on, as I wrote, language–one of the banes of my writerly existence–and how I view the language and very different writing styles of four literary friends of mine. I never, ever compare my writing to theirs because if I do I will just get discouraged. But I love to read their stuff and think about what makes it so compelling, so that’s what I have scribbled about.

Now to do the adult thing and write it out, set it aside, edit it, look it over, edit it again–and only then put it online. Heh.

via

Only, the book is so boring that I am not certain I’ll make it past the first chapter. Perhaps I should treat it as a cautionary tale, if nothing else.