Cliches in All Their Inglories

This is going to be a mini rant about the favorite "do not do" and "how to avoid" wisdom nuggets put out there by every writing magazine and teacher. I just received an e-mail that offers the inevitable 10 tips, which is a cliche in itself, on avoiding cliches and melodramas. It just happens that, to me, these are two of the best springboards for diving into writing.

That's right, a cliche is the perfect place to start by pulling out all stops on melodrama. Yum. The richness in most cliches, or the sheer absurdity, is what made them popular. And bring on the melodrama for its ghosts, chest beating and copious intrigue to gain insight into how an audience can sink its teeth into this delicacy year after year.

Those are only a few reasons to embrace, or at least play with, the cliches and melodrama that make writing fun at times. Just think, the decomposing body of a cliche is the ideal place to grow a new idea or plot.

The Most Noteable

The headline is a play on words from the last post, and entirely in line with what writing is to me.

When my son was young, five or six, long before he was sucked into the world of video games, we would play with the words he had in his spelling lists. We would create silly words for the very serious ones on the lists and pun our way home.

How many adults do you know who would play along this way? Would you?

The Rhythm in Our Self Beliefs

For those writers who are scribes of rhythm and rhymes, the ones who play with the tune in the stories along with beginnings, middles and endings...it's all about believing in yourself.

It's about tuning into the music inherent in the way we put together words, the string quartets that accompany the moments when everything is perfectly timed.

But first it takes believing in yourself enough to start. Put together words in your own voice, in your own rhythm and in your own time.

Deconstruct the Writing Teacher in Your Head

If you hear the constant litanies of "Be sure you capitalize," "Dot your i's and cross your t's" and "Don't start a sentence with a preposition," then it's time to deconstruct the varying voices of past experiences.

Any time we stop ourselves from writing based on a myopic view of this wondrous adventure, we put ourselves back into that classroom of rights and wrongs, do and don't and succeed or fail. Notice how judgmental and grating that voice is in your head. Do you give it a male or female voice? Is it high-pitched shrieking or a silky appeal to the editor in you to: "Make this madness stop!"

Take a deep breath and look around at the numerous tomes on writing that surround you. I've spent hundreds on books alone, much less the college and online writing courses that have included everything from the art to the business of writing. But as a writer, each book and class made me believe deep down that only the privileged few could reach the heights and put out books that are "worthy."

That is why I'm still editing my first young adult science fiction book, which has been completed for at least three years. It is in part why another book that is near and dear to my heart is only at three chapters. I listened to that editor and teacher in my head, rather than believing in the simple truth of those words, the characters and the worlds that are mine alone and worthy.

Write What You Can Imagine

Today I was listening to three teenage boys discuss the unrealistic admonition to fall forward without  using your hands to break the fall. As anyone who has suffered a broken wrist after falling knows, it's not in our biology to roll without putting our hands out first.

We naturally extend our arms, palms out, to protect ourselves from a painful or overwhelming experience, whether it is to say "No, you can't tell me that," or to grasp the moment that "Is too wonderful for words."  Doing anything different is against our natures as human beings.

So why do so many people give the advice that we must "write what we know"? This limits us as writers, and allows others to believe that they are being sage rather than pedantic.

Our first instinct as writers must be the one that drives us to unearth the unknown within the known. And, yes, we may break a few ancient bones in the process, but it's the only way to push back against the restrictions inherent in the "rules" of writing.

What We Share and How We Can be Daring

What this blog is asking other writers to do is acknowledge our similarities at the same time it encourages the ways we are unique.

We share the tap, tap, tap of desire to express ourselves. And in the past, with typewriters, we had a sound that accompanied this creative urge, and didn't delete whole blocks of text when we weren't looking. With a computer keyboard, the sound is muffled, and the process can be short-circuited with a "blue screen" dump that has made too many writers scream at the loss or losses it brings.

So many of us live with an ever-present need to write something, anything, as a mantra of sorts. We think of plot, characterization and dialogue as we brush our teeth, as we drive to work and when we kiss our children goodnight. The first step is to recognize how many seemingly insignificant actions and emotions build to trigger this muse.

Where we take these moment-to-moment inspirations leads to the daring aspect of this blog. If we follow them, they dare us on to greater triumphs. If we discard or discount the ebb and flow of these gems of meaning, it haunts us. So the next step is to acknowledge that we never lose this steady stream of writing prompts, we just build on them.

Create Waves in Writing Worlds

As writers we are ultimate overseers of the worlds within words.

The power to create and destroy those worlds is ours. It's all or nothing on a free-flight of imagination.

And it all begins with a stroke of a key, the sweep of a pen nub on parchment, the whisper of an idea into a tape recorder or a crayon on lined paper. We then catch that wave of thought and turn it into a story, a poem or a brilliant treatise on "greening." And all along, the writer who is shaping those words is shaped by them.

How many times do we look out at a vast ocean of possible worlds in words, only to dig our toes into the sand on the shore and yearn?