Today I
woke up like the sun: Strong and brilliant!
I don’t
have much of these days in the last times, so I knew it was my responsibility
to grab it and do the best out of it. I know these days, they are the fuel for
the upcoming weeks, they are inspired by the muses and wish to run free like a
wild horse. On these days you are strong and you have got to produce as much as
you can, stop everything else, even stop eating and just follow the call. And
that’s what I did! … And today, after long, long time of wandering and
searching, I had a breakthrough! I finally have a story which is worth writing
about, a quest to solve, one that I am not only fascinated about, but one which
I profoundly hope, won’t fade away after a few days like so many other ideas
did…
How did I
reach there? Well, before I would have said it’s all about inspiration… But the
muses are more than mere, sporadical appearances of inspiration. They are
actually coquette beings, attracted to confidence.
I have been
reading some articles about writing. Some part of me was searching for help.
But a very big part of me always refused reading them, because they come from
people who are actually writing. They usually start with… “After my third book
…” or “how to increase my word-count from 2.000 to 10.000 in one hour”. All this
was not really helping me at the foetus-writer-status I am now…
As long as
I could judge it, my problems were:
(a)
No
focus. That means: I hadn’t clear what I wanted to write about and was
therefore jumping from one topic to another trying to convince myself to get
enthusiastic about this and that and actually missing real enthusiasm from
inside.
(b)
Impatience.
If you are a writer, you want to write. Not writing, or not knowing what to
write about feels like a total failure. I started thinking of dropping writing
and preparing myself to start to search a serious job again. This felt even
worse, because it felt like I didn’t even give myself the chance to actually
really start this adventure. I had been cautiously preparing this moment in my
life, where I can actually dedicate to my writing, and now I was giving up
without any battle even fought!
(c)
Lost.
At the beginning, I wasn’t even putting myself the questions what my actual
problems were. I was just trying to get information at random, hoping that
inspiration, questions and answers would just pop up somewhere. I think it was
not till I actually started understanding that impatience and lack of focus
were my main problems, that I started finding the proper course again. And the
biggest:
(d)
Fear.
Yes, fear.
Finally I can admit it: There is some kind of fear inside me, which blocks out
every creativity and every clear thought. I think I want to write and I am on
it, but I am hiding my fears from myself, I am not focusing on the demons, but
avoiding them, and therefore I cannot write. At least I cannot write anything
that really matters to me.
But today I
had a breakthrough. On my sunshine day, with the heart filled with confidence,
I finally felt encouraged enough to embrace some of the wise advises I had been
given.
The first
of them was from Gwen Stephens (http://gwenstephens.wordpress.com/2013/01/25/are-you-an-impatient-writer/)
she quoted an article explaining that writing is a craft, which (as any craft)
takes years to learn. That helped dealing with the impatience. The second came
from a Peruvian story-teller and my sensei through the fairy tale world, Wayqui
(https://www.facebook.com/wayqui.pe?ref=ts&fref=ts). He said: “Don’t fight fear, give
into it. If you want to tell a story and think you will do it wrong, just
accept you will do it wrong, take it as a fact, that you will do it wrong. Then, everything has already happened; you can
relax and start building from there.” The third very valuable advice gave me
the direction, the focus. I had to find my main quest for the story, or how
Alex Martin put it, clarify the track of the conflict (http://salexmartin.webs.com/apps/blog/categories/show/1591028-5-ways-to-improve-your-writing-by-reading-other-books-).
I had to define a main conflict in the story I wanted to tell.
So today,
following these advices I ventured into my private zones, the inner demons, the
things I am not confident about and actually don’t want to share with anyone. I
started putting them on paper in confidence that every paper can be burned at
the end of the day. I had tried out all other directions, except for the
journey into the interior. Though I refused to venture this way, and I also
didn’t expect anything of it but pitiful and winy expressions of the usually
locked up part of myself, I owed myself a try. I owed my dream the try.
The result nevertheless
ended up in a DiNA3 page filled with an immense diagram, with arrows and lines,
single words and quotations all over the page. It seems I finally had a lot to
say about something.
I have known
my current main quest in real life for a while now. I just wasn’t willing to
admit it, much less write it down for other people to read, because I consider
myself a modern pragmatic woman, and this quest is about romance. And saying it
out loud sounds still kitschy to me and the proud part of me feels like it has
just been punched in the face again.
But we will
ignore that, because today, I was able to take a glimpse at this particular
demon, the one who locks the entrance to the spooky castle. I could start
describing it. I am proud of myself.
And now I
feel, all of these things I have been reading in the last weeks suddenly can help
me a lot. I keep the advices and experiences of all the other writers like a
bunch of keys in my pockets and they help me opening up some of the secret
doors in the spooky castle. Reading
therefore helps a lot.
But the
steps to these doors, the steps which will lead you to and through a story
worth telling, they have to be walked by the storyteller on its own. And advancing
towards and inside the castle is impossible at the beginning, because you don’t
know how to move. When you enter the world of tales and novels, you enter a new
dimension with its own rules. Walking, talking and moving around here works
different. Stepping forward is like a word-game. I am only allowed to move a
step further, if I put a question. If I am too scared to put a proper question,
I simply won’t move, no matter how nice the views are. Once you get it, it is
sort of a joke. Because the first step, is to put the first question, and how
could you possibly know, that in order to learn how to walk in this bizarre
story world, you have to question everything?