Today, and what the wind throws back
Well, today is the last day of the summer semester, and it would appear that I haven't noticeably ruined anyone's life or steered anyone wrong to the point of them soaring off a cliff. I cound that a win. But, I've found that our impacts are hardly visible until much later, after we've make them. This quandry is actually the focus of a mountain notes I've been expanding, and pushing in the direction of yet another novel project. I've come to more fully understand a joke Chris Rock made in a recent stand-up in regards to the difference between a job and a career (along with people with jobs and those with careers).
And I realized the differnce between writing and preparing to write. I call them notes, and sometimes I call the process outlining, but really, it's just preparation. I've become confident that I can throw my creativity at virtually anything, and in my mind, whatever it is will sprout blossoms and produce colors. And while that's all well and good, for all the chaotic sentience that is an idea, it needs some structure to be receptive to others. At least, until we derive a mechanism that translates the noises and colors in our mind into the language of another's (working on a story about that, too). So, I plan. I think about what next steps I will take, and why, and how they will lead me to the ending I had in mind weeks or months back when I thought of the idea in the first place.
So that's today, and in honor of that I thought I'd switch up the background also this soap box of mine. I tell you, they are really making it a lot easier these days to make laziness look like effort. And also in the spirit of switching things up, I also have on my mental calendar not only some (more) things to do, but some things to re-do. Namely, the novella I had published some months back and the screenplay which I finished, and let a few people read it. Both seem like fertile enough places to work; now all I have to do is have a do a neater job planting and hope for a better harvest.
Tonight is a writer's group meeting, where I think in addition to the normal critiquing, we also have some business to discuss. And that's also something new for me. Making decisions normally comes down to the finer points of grammar and the bending versus breaking of a given rule or trend. Not concerns like how long to spend critiquing a piece, or how we decide who should go next and why, induction of new members, writing exercises, even hiatuses from meeting and/or critiquing. At a publisher I'm contracted with, there was even a vote concerning distribution, number of steps from one phase to the next, the pros the cons of each, and my vote thrown in the hat with all the others.
And this is all a bit different from what I'm used to. Then again, that's how we grow, right? Doing things we are unfamiliar with. Walking around in an unknown place at night with no flashlight. Hm. Describing it that way might be why I tend to not do much of it. But not today. Today, I'm in a mountain-clmbing mood.
And I realized the differnce between writing and preparing to write. I call them notes, and sometimes I call the process outlining, but really, it's just preparation. I've become confident that I can throw my creativity at virtually anything, and in my mind, whatever it is will sprout blossoms and produce colors. And while that's all well and good, for all the chaotic sentience that is an idea, it needs some structure to be receptive to others. At least, until we derive a mechanism that translates the noises and colors in our mind into the language of another's (working on a story about that, too). So, I plan. I think about what next steps I will take, and why, and how they will lead me to the ending I had in mind weeks or months back when I thought of the idea in the first place.
So that's today, and in honor of that I thought I'd switch up the background also this soap box of mine. I tell you, they are really making it a lot easier these days to make laziness look like effort. And also in the spirit of switching things up, I also have on my mental calendar not only some (more) things to do, but some things to re-do. Namely, the novella I had published some months back and the screenplay which I finished, and let a few people read it. Both seem like fertile enough places to work; now all I have to do is have a do a neater job planting and hope for a better harvest.
Tonight is a writer's group meeting, where I think in addition to the normal critiquing, we also have some business to discuss. And that's also something new for me. Making decisions normally comes down to the finer points of grammar and the bending versus breaking of a given rule or trend. Not concerns like how long to spend critiquing a piece, or how we decide who should go next and why, induction of new members, writing exercises, even hiatuses from meeting and/or critiquing. At a publisher I'm contracted with, there was even a vote concerning distribution, number of steps from one phase to the next, the pros the cons of each, and my vote thrown in the hat with all the others.
And this is all a bit different from what I'm used to. Then again, that's how we grow, right? Doing things we are unfamiliar with. Walking around in an unknown place at night with no flashlight. Hm. Describing it that way might be why I tend to not do much of it. But not today. Today, I'm in a mountain-clmbing mood.
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