Resolution Revolution

Writing Exercise 2

Note: So, on this one I had to actually do it in the book itself as there is a page with letters sprinkled through the lines and it's not something I can faithfully replicate here.  Here is the product of the exercise.  The given letters are in Bold Yellow to stand out just as they do in the book.

Use each letter as you get to it.
Start with: New Year's resolutions make me...

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New Year's resolutions make me wistful for a better me.  Logically I understand that there is nothing special about the End of a year - each day is a new opportunity. Why then does the 1st of Yet another year fill me with such hope and dread?  I'm prEdisposed to self-improvement.  Always have been, but there is a speciAl kind of urgency with each year that Races past.  Some things I'm now past improving on, but I still resolve to do them.  Some might call it optimistic Rather than delusional; perhaps it's a misguided attempt to be kind.  PridE and total unwillingneSs to give up or admit that something is beyOnd me is really what drives me to make resolutions, be it New Year's Eve or the middLe of the week.  WithoUt resolutions and goals to push yourself To achieve, what is the point of getting up in the morning?  So, perhaps I take it to an extreme on occasion, but no One is privy to my resolutions but me.  So what if they are unrealistic or undoubtedly bouNd to fail?  In the end no one will know that I've resolved to do anything more than to get out of bed and soldier on... one unrealistic resolution at a time.

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Writing exercises

There is a treasure trove of books about writing out there.  And I've bought or tried more of them than I can count.  Books on style, books on writing specific genres, and of course books full of writing exercises intended to exorcise the most stubborn of writer's blocks.

Most of them are like recipe books - you pick one up at the store and flip through it, fingers sliding over glossy pages with full page photos of food so delicious looking, it makes your mouth water.  And then when you get home you realize that the dishes that looked so good on paper take half a day to prepare or contain greens that your significant other will not touch under pain of death or that the list of spices and ingredients extends a full page and before you know it, you've lost interest in the book before its lovely pages even had a chance to develop creases.  Not that I'm speaking from personal experience here or anything...

So, back to writing exercises.  I'm killing time today between flights.  All in all I have about twelve hours between the red eye that brought me from Seattle to Boston and the evening flight from Boston that will take me back home to Seattle.  To kill time with some sort of productivity I picked up yet another book of writing exercises and I am going to try a few of them.

Norbert (that's him on the right) who is my companion for the trip will be a witness to my efforts.  Somehow I think he'll be less judgmental about my writing than I tend to be. 

Writing Exercise 1

In each group below, choose one word that appeals to you

1. Alabama - Banister - Carousel - Diesel - Exorcist
2. Flatulence - Garage - Harried - Insensitive - Jambalaya
3. Keepsake - Lamb - Massage - Nonsense - Oriole

Use these three words in a story.
Start with: Sometimes I feel just like a gerbil, running around and around in his wheel!

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Sometimes I feel just like a gerbil, running around and around in his wheel!  All that effort and expended energy and for what?  Every day is a carbon copy of the one that came before it and worse, oh so much worse, a blueprint for the one that will follow.  Something has to be done...  I know it, but the mere thought of the careful planning involved is enough to send me to the kitchen and the comforts of cooking something long and complicated.  Something with multiple ingredients and even more steps.  Something like an authentic Jambalaya from scratch.  I could even make my own sausage, god knows I have the time.

When I'm cooking I can almost convince myself that the wheel has slowed down a bit, that the scenery has changed or at least paused long enough to become nuanced, to offer options.  Options of escape.  The more intricate and complex the recipe, the more spices and exotic ingredients it involves, the better.  The wheel almost stops when hours go by in the quest for perfection in a single dish.

Only it always starts up again...

All right, enough of this nonsense, the banisters won't shine themselves and there's a pile of laundry waiting in the vicinity of the basket.  Maybe roast chicken for dinner with homemade garlicky roasted potatoes and wilted spinach?  Would garlic mask the taste of arsenic?
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On writing...

Almost three months since my last post...  I didn't expect the hiatus to be quite this long, but as usual, it's only when I return to the blog that I realize just how long it's been since I've written something last.

I haven't been entirely unproductive in the intervening time.  In fact, I think I've made a larger and more determined push to write recently than any I can recall.  And it's all been for nothing.

I feel the need to write.  It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that I crave the satisfaction that comes with seeing a well-crafted sentence on the screen in front of me.  But all these sentences need to add up to something and lately they don't.  Whatever I write feels flat.  There are occasional flashes of goodness - paragraphs that light up and flow effortlessly - and in their light I can immediately see just how flat and barren the surrounding text is. 

I can't connect to what I'm writing.  Without that connection, it's just words on the page.  It's a school essay written under duress on a topic that you have absolutely no interest in.  And that I think is the problem...  The topic.

I've been trying to write stories about a life I can no longer identify with.  Every "how to write" book will tell you to write about what you know.  But what it doesn't tell you is that it's not enough to know about something in order to write about it.  My writing has always relied on my emotions to feed it.  I know about and I've experienced a lot of things.  In some ways I've lived a more varied life than most people I know, but that's of no help to me right now.  None of the things that I know about or have experienced are arousing the sort of emotions and feelings that I need in order to be able to write and write well.

I can't fool myself into thinking that what I've written in recent months is good writing.  I know good writing.  I know my good writing and this isn't it.