The Pull of Writing On- and Offline

Considering that children and adults from age 4 to 90 have access to smart phones and interactive computer pads that encourage quick and easy creative expression, does this ease motivate former non-writing writers to write again?

I come by this question naturally, because my teenage son who says he hates to write is writing a 1.500 page book spurred by Google documents and the worlds created in the visual games he plays. From what I understand, because he won't let me read it, he describes actions and his characters vividly. He's also gathering readers.

He also tells me that he will finish this first "book" before I stop rewriting and editing my first science fiction novel. As a direct challenge, it is more than welcome. Although publishing is not the only reason to write, writing teachers (they can also be reading ones) have recognized the opportunities for students of all ages to publish online or in local papers or magazines. The National Writing Project at http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/doc/about.csp provides a thorough overview of this issue, although it also touts its writing programs and consulting service. 
 
Unfortunately, in many schools throughout the U.S., the emphasis is on reading and math, not the writing that would help both learning areas. Less than a quarter of  American 12th graders were proficient in  written expression in two studies, in 2002 and 2007, sponsored by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The remedies, culled from years of studies, include:   students analyzing models of good writing; explicitly teaching students strategies on how to plan, revise and edit their work; students collaboratively using these writing strategies; and students receiving specific goals for each writing project. This study can be found at http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/regions/northwest/pdf/REL_20124010.pdf.

In terms of inspiration, this knowledge is useless, at least to me. I have seen young students who write outside such boxes get discouraged because teachers cannot differentiate. On the other hand, all of us could use the basic tools this study describes to frame our forays outside these far too restrictive walls.

Also, for those of us who write because it is a creative expression of our inner imaginings, it may still be necessary to create more standard pieces to survive and to grow. That is where all these studies come in. Doesn't it make you feel good to know that you may be in the quarter of those students who can write, or that despite not being in that quarter of students thought of as good writers, that you still write, and write well?

In other words, at some point you became a writer despite all odds against, or for you. Celebrate that knowledge.

Bad Influences

I'm taking a class on interpersonal business practices that emphasizes the point that this blog is attempting to debunk: The only way to lead or follow is to conform. We are supposed to mirror, smile when we don't mean it, be false to ourselves and others just to fit in and accept that without doing all these things, we will never make good corporate cogs.

Does this sound familiar? Consider the day to day bad influences in writing. Few, if any of us, have been encouraged to write without both the text and our ability to write being judged, graded or critiqued in some way.  That means that most writing these days does not come from a genuine desire to communicate. We write to earn money or a grade, to prove something to ourselves or others, to convince or cajole and because we are told over and over that all writing is formulaic.

If you are lucky, as a child you were allowed to read every book you could understand and get your hands on. You read for pleasure, because the illustrations and the words' rhythms made you smile or laugh. We could get lost in that flow for hours.

Then as we grew, others decided what we should read and what shape our writing would take. For many of us, our only writing outside school was in diaries or journals. We started judging our own writing abilities based on whether the teacher put a star on a poem or shared a short story with the class.

In the next blog post, I will go into how high school English has always been about reading and comprehension. Although there is a push to change this.

For today, though, look around at the influences you embrace because they are familiar and make you feel like a writer when you follow the prescriptions closely. Think about one piece of advice that doesn't work for you, but has become a habit, such as outlining. Then consider how you can change that habit to help you write without caring about how it ends; to concentrate instead on how writing makes you feel at this moment.

It Doesn't Take a Floodlight

Imagine lighting one small birthday candle to ferret out the fears you don't even know exist, except as a constant exception to your own rules of creativity. That small flicker is how many of us perceive the ability to look into the corners of this attic we call a brain and confront the writing terrors that hold us back. These may include:

1. Too little attention.
2. Too much attention.
3. Not creative enough.
4. Too creative for anyone else to understand.
5. Rejection based on valid concerns.
6. Rejection based on invalid concerns.

You get the idea...sometimes a writer is so busy fearing all the possible outcomes that she or he can miss an opportunity to write without caring about the end product.

Instead, take a few minutes to write out those fears, along with the most far-fetched ways you would handle  a rejection, too little or too much attention or being misunderstood. Outside school and work, our writing efforts don't get graded except by our harshest critic -- ourselves. (Granted, some people can't or don't do this to anything they create.)

No writer can control how a book will be received, despite all the advice on how to critic-proof a query letter and sample. You just have to trust that after all the time spent writing and rewriting, you have done your very best and let that baby go. Move on to the sequel, or a different genre, if you feel the spirit. After all, fear is what you make of it in terms of horror.

(I'm going to go off rail for a minute, but still talk about a fear that legitimately stalls many freelance writers. In November, I will no longer have health insurance and had to look for an alternative that makes sense economically and mental health-wise. My solution is to return to the university and put into an education what I am now paying each month for COBRA insurance.)

Creatively Numb?

How long has it been since you gave in to your "calling" as a writer? Do you have to sneak up on it? Does it take meditation or medication to get you started?

If we constantly deny or avoid the creative urge, this power to make and break worlds can seep out through the cracks in our dreams and a constant feeling that we have left someone or something behind. (And you thought it was pure paranoia?)

First, a 2011 study at Cornell University found that wildly creative ideas often meet with resistance due to the fear of change, along with an inability of many humans to easily adapt to new situations. In a news release at http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Aug11/ILRCreativityBias.html, the authors of dual studies conducted at the University of Pennsylvania reported that common reactions to creative ideas include resistance and prejudice against all the details. Four findings of the studies were that:

• The novelty of creative ideas can lead to uncertainty that makes many people uncomfortable.
• Tried and true ideas, considered practical, win over creative ideas.
• Facts or objective evidence in favor of a creative proposal do not lead to acceptance.
• The subtly of this anti-creativity bias works against a person even recognizing that a creative idea is valid. 

Take a few minutes now to look at how you react to creative ideas at work, home or at school. Think about how many times you might have thought to yourself or told someone else,"That's not possible." If it is within the last month or week, it's time to push back against any fear of the unknown to find the breakthroughs that get you beyond "creatively numb" to creatively active.

The fear factor involved in creativity has been studied from both sides: catalyst and roadblock. The next post will address how to harness common inner fears as a catalyst to kick-starting your writing creativity.

Obervation and Breathing

Each day we breathe in and out, something so many people take for granted, requires our body's attention to the details of survival. If you have ever been so involved in a project that food was the last thing on your mind, it's your stomach and waning strength that made you break that concentration and eat.

For many of us, writing hinges on the same incentives. We truly live through words, thought and creative use of metaphor or rhythmic intent. Take a few minutes to look around you and discover how you have paved the way to write. Do you surround yourself with paper, pencils, notebooks, computers with at least five programs that allow you to draw along with write, or write and add sound to the creation?

Take a few minutes each week to really see how you feed your need to create with words. Honor that creative force that depends on our breathing to keep it going, along with our belief that writing is as natural as air to us.

The Product in Productivity

In a work world increasingly squeezed by the idea of more work in less time, with the understanding that technology is an aid, the productivity of a writer is measured like any other metric.

Take for instance an article on "Measuring Technical Writer Productivity," published at http://www.writingassist.com/newsroom/measuring-technical-writer-productivity/. This article makes the case for using a spreadsheet to balance the workload and the capacity of each writer to complete that load.  The variables measured by the authors, Pam Swanwick and Juliet Wells Leckenby, include: an estimate of the number of topics or pages required for an end product; the complexity of a project based on a value from one to three; the percentage of new or substantially revised content, such that starting from scratch provides a value of 100 percent; and any special projects that a writer has taken on in addition to the regular workload. It's actually a great system...in the workplace.

Although I understand and appreciate this need for a product that can be measured in the corporate world, the push in writing advice to quantify the productivity in personal and fiction writing makes me cringe. Writing outside a job you get paid to perform is more organic, or should be.

Some days life gets in the way of completing, or lends itself to, a short story, poem or song. No one is looking over your shoulder, or at least I hope not, in these moments. You can move between a blog, cooking a meal and finishing an article on your own. A writer can spend a whole afternoon working on one paragraph to perfect a chapter in a novel or spin a narrative off the cuff in a spate of Tweets.

The real world inevitably knocks us back to the lists, goals and the pressure to produce. But if we can play before the next summons, we can take back and own our private creativity.  (This flower represents to me the seamless beauty of letting our own nature decide when we work best and how. It is not Photoshopped, only cropped by the GIMP program.)

Who Defines Success?

It is not a trick question, just a tricky answer for many writers. When you picture yourself outside the role of  a writer, do you feel successful? Do you judge success by money, fame or recognition?

The reason I ask is that an e-mail touting how to be a successful writer made me think about my schooling, the newsletters and news magazines that I've produced and the newspapers in the past that carried my photos and articles. Then I moved on to my current attempts to master graphic and photography programs, and everything in my past, including the books, essays and poetry faded for a minute.

So bear with me as this post works to give some perspective to accepting each step we take on our creative journey as successes. This is the anti-monetary view of accomplishments, a top five reality check:

1. Acknowledge every word you have written, from that Mother's Day poem in kindergarten to the business letter that went out today without errors.
2. Specialize in recognizing what motivates you to write. Is it rhymes, poetry, scenery, caustic wit or visual gymnastics? If you are like most creatives, you can look around right now and find a whole list of specialties that you don't recognize for what they are: the stepping stones to writing "success."
3. If you have a blog, do it because it brings you joy or connects you to others who share your interests. The same goes for Tweets, Google+ and other social media outlets. Make it about what is possible, not building a platform. (That is unless you have a contract for a book and need to market it. Then build away!)
4.  Touch base with past and present accomplishments. These can be as simple as the notebook you bought this week that holds two pages of free-form writing, the bookcase you have filled with stories and articles or the ideas written on notes that you keep finding around the house in the strangest places.
5. Focus on the possibilities that you have made into reality.

Above all, recognize that every day you write is another day of success.