On Writing

I sit here staring at the cursor blinking in its unassuming rhythm. It is mindless of the turmoil the blank screen and its very relentless presence cause me. I have a forum, a blank slate, a free ticket to write to my heart’s content, and I am sitting here blocked before I even begin! Of course, the very fact that these words appear here, in this small space, defies the meaning of them. So I am now writing…about not writing. I am filling the page with strung together characters that describe the act of doing just that!

The truth is, how many ‘writers’, aspiring writers perhaps, find themselves in just such a predicament? How to make this little ‘blurb’ riveting or informative, or just interesting enough to entice you to read a little farther? I am so inexperienced in writing I barely know where to begin. I am tempted to begin somewhere in the middle of a scene, some random slice of mystery and intrigue to which I am not responsible for filling in the blanks, answering the tough questions, developing the characters, or even answering the basic five W’s. Would this be a cardinal sin of writing? Let’s defy the rules of convention and try just such an exercise.

“Naked and shuddering he felt the icy fingers of the cold air brushing over his flesh, raising random goosebumps and sending tiny shivers along individual hairs across his feverish body. Was it dark? It seemed as though it must be, but was it just that his eyes were closed? He couldn’t even tell if they were open or not. He felt disconnected and disoriented and tried to pattern his thoughts into a logical format. Eyes. His eyes. Could he feel them at all? Concentrating, he began to notice throbbing pain. His impressions, though hazy, were becoming rapidly distinct. He noticed a rough cold surface against his face; he was lying down, curled onto his side, on pavement. Darkness? Yes, it was night, he located the muscles responsible for his eyelids and managed to twitch one open slightly. There was a dim outline of a dumpster. The effort at sight was more than enough to tax his resources. He shut his eye again. Concentrating instead on what he could hear, he strained against the pain beginning to flood across his body to listen to the sounds of the night around him. There, a dog barked in the distance. No cars were passing by. There was a rattle of a tin can being dropped or kicked across a distant alley, the sound echoing lightly. His fingernails stung. They felt jagged, torn, and raw. He was thirsty. He wished he could take back that thought. The instant he realized it, it became an all-consuming obsession. He needed water! Where was he? Who was he? What had happened to him?”

Yes. Those are all good questions, and I do not have the answers to them! Was he mugged? A spy? A criminal? Was he inherently good, or intrinsically bad? Do you get the impression he is an innocent victim, or that his misfortune is the result of his own poor choices? I prefer to throw out these little scenes for which I can describe the details and create the mood…yet leave the plot for someone else! Perhaps I lack the commitment to see a larger project through. Perhaps I don’t have the confidence to feel I can adequately flesh out such a story.

Does one begin at the beginning, or find their way in from the middle somewhere? I wish I had the story all laid out in my mind. “X” meets “Y” they interact in the following defined relationship, learn “Z” and there you are, a nice tidy story. Do I rush out and invest my time and energy in ‘Creative Writing 101’, ‘Writing for Dummies’, or crash-courses in grammar, language arts, and plot development? Or do I feel my way out of the scene and see what happens, relying on whatever natural talent and raw ability I may or may not possess? Can I make you smell, hear, taste, feel and be there? Yes, I am confident of that. Can I tell you why you are smelling, hearing, tasting, feeling or being? Not so sure. I can throw you in the cab of a dusty pickup and jostle you across a rutted dirt road, but where does it lead, and for goodness’ sake, why are you in such a hurry in the first place? Or better yet, drop you into a worn Adirondack chair on a weathered porch overlooking a lake as still as glass with the sun rising across the water and the loons calling forlornly through the light mist across the lake. The question is, why are you up so darned early? It’s all a mystery to me, yet I am supposed to be the omnipotent ‘creator’ of such things…if I don’t have the answers, from whence shall they come? It is a disturbing thing to be a writer without a story…a purveyor of prose with no more than a one-dimensional image to offer.

So…that being said, the goal is to try to get from A to Z and fill in the gaps in the middle with life altering, riveting and incredibly well written prose. That sounds like a piece of cake…sure, if you’re Dean Koontz, Patricia Cromwell, John Grisham, or any other number of incredibly prolific and talented writers. In the meantime, I will blog, blog, and blog away until I learn this craft. You’re welcome to come along for the ride!