rebellion

masked person holding a flag in front at a crowd at a protest

if you sit down in a room or in a corner of a cafe or bar and write you are engaging in an act of rebellion. you are choosing to go against the norms of polite society and do something out there. you have made the conscious decision to shun communication and contact with your family, friends, colleagues in order to sit down and put words on the page. you are being deliberately antisocial. you are saying to other members of society to leave you alone. you do not want to chat about the weather, their day, what to have for dinner, a program on tv, what’s happening in the news, the wider world. you don’t want any of that. you demand silence. to be left. to be left to sit in your corner tapping away at a keyboard or scribing on a page. those who dare interrupt are in danger of releasing a beast of contempt at being so thoughtless as to dare interrupt the great undertaking of putting words on the page. yet later. we may forgive. and come worming into your affections asking you to read what we have written. to comment upon it. (positively). to exalt our act of rebellion.

if you sit down in the corner of a room and write you are engaging in an act of rebellion. you are stating that you will be different from the others. you will create something that no other before has created. you will carve your own path. you will prove the gate keepers wrong. battle the market forces. to produce something that has only value to you but none the less should be shared widely. you demand it so. you will think the gate keepers blinded. foolish. lost. how could they have failed to see the brilliance in your words. the genius that lay within. you will show them. again. you will fight. you will put more words on the page. give some away free. to hell with market forces.

if you sit down in the corner and write you are engaging in an act of rebellion. you are cramming together things that should not be put together. crossing the genre boundaries of reason. forming situations that question the status quo. asking why? what if? to think and write is rebellion. the taking of ideas and expressing them when others may disagree. may question if such a path is wise. you do it anyway.

the rebel must be protected. their source material saved. their output sought. shun the bland. the conformity. embrace the different.

words

Featured | Posted by theworddoodler

i’ve always had a problem with words. not the deciding on them. not the thinking of them. the focusing on the words to use. the need to reach for a thesaurus because they just won’t come. not that problem. the word count. that’s the issue. no matter how big an idea or how many chapters i seem to always get a low word count.

i plan out my writing. brief lines with a few details what will happen in each chapter. then i begin and write. i sit down at my keyboard and tap away. the idea clear in my mind. full knowledge of the setting and what the character has to achieve in that chapter. i write the scene. describe the setting, add the action and dialogue. build it up as slow as i can. chapter finished. 1500-2000 words. where’s the rest of it? surely i can write longer?

being a two finger typist, i think: maybe its the typing. maybe i should revert back to the old pen and paper. ditch the modern technology. unhamper myself. free myself to write without the distractions a machine brings. but it’s no good. still the same length of chapter. 1500-2000 words. still the problem that the novel is just not long enough for publishers.

perhaps it goes back to me. i’ve never been one to talk lots. always one to listen. speak when i have something to say. something to share. my shaggy dog stories peter out. the dog dies before it gets to the end of the tale. conciseness is in my nature. why use 300 words when a sentence will do? there are some who can talk. really talk. add lots of detail and atmosphere. and write that way. but my thinking has always been why mention the table is red if the colour isn’t important? only mention the details that are important to the plot and events. cut back the chaff.

perhaps my whole approach is wrong. maybe i need to let forth with a wave of unnecessary words. use 100 when 10 would do. but it goes against my grain. perhaps, as i suspect, it is the demanded word counts are wrong that a novel should be the length it should be. should the ‘great gatsby’ be made longer because it doesn’t meet acceptable word counts? max porter’s work lengthened to an epic? or do the publishers need to be more flexible in their approach? is it time for change? perhaps selfish i know. me calling for a revolution just to suit how i write. but think of all the great writing lost because it didn’t meet a required format (i don’t include myself in this).

words. when are many too many? few too few?

sometimes

Featured | Posted by theworddoodler

sometimes you are gripped with imposter syndrome and the feeling you are wasting your time in the futile gesture of putting words to a page in the hope that someday you will be happy with it that it was all worthwhile the evenings of doubt frustration regret hope the unending feeling that you are so close that it is just over there that knots your stomach at night as you try to sleep but your mind won’t rest as it is full of nagging questions about the viability of the project you are working on whether it was all just a foolhardy endeavour in the first place that you rushed in not heeding the warnings that you were overreaching you should try something simpler a haiku maybe no a single sentence start there but you foolish you decided to rush straight in and try and write a novel again with characters not fully formed just going through the paces in unformed scenes like shadows in an early 80’s video game with all line drawings and the only colour is green and you don’;t even like that so you are left with the realisation that your story is missing a big something a great big something and you are a failure you’ve let yourself down and the people you told you were writing a novel and ask how the progress is going but they have now learnt not to ask anymore as the answer is always the same it’s coming along slowly so you are lying there fretting about the blank page in your book that needs words and exhausted your eyes droop then close but just before they close the idea the solution pops in and you write it down on the page by your bed satisfied that the solution has been found you can rest easy now so you sleep happy only to wake the next day and look at that paper and wonder what the fuck that word means and you are right back where you were the day before with mr imposter syndrome.

anyway. it is sometimes good to remind ourselves why we got into this writing malarkey anyway. the best way i find for me is to pick up a book by a writer i like and read their words and be transported and enjoy the sensation of being carried somewhere and then i remember it is making others feel this way through my work is why i do it. the smiles on faces. the appreciative words. the collective joy. that’s why i do it.