I was speed writing yesterday–testing five minute sprints to see how much I could get out in 5 if I just let my mind go and be free. Honestly, that was the original idea of the 10 minute rule. I wanted to have ten to write and let go and do what it is I decided to do from that point as a kid when I wrote that choose your own adventure book called Russia. I think I might still have that somewhere. I remember it so clearly in my minds eye; the way the plane was shaped almost like a high top sneaker against the orange cover. I felt so proud of myself in that moment. I think that moment of personal pride was and perhaps still is defining for me as a writer. I don’t know that I write for anyone else. Maybe for the Lady Talis, but if anything it is for her to be proud of me the way I was and often still am proud of myself looking back at finished work. When it comes down to it, writing is about being proud of myself. I want that ephemeral feeling of having put the work in and being able to see something I’ve done and can look at and say that I did that. I think that having others appreciate that work is more reflective, because it tells me that they see what I see, which is a finished work that, hopefully, isn’t shit.
I’ve been chasing that feeling so long that I forgot what I was chasing. It’s the man in black fleeing across the desert. It’s the elusive hit from the pipe that takes you back to that place you were that one time when everything felt perfect. It is all of these things and none of them, because it is also about the moment of creation; of having my butt in the chair and typing as fast and freely as I can as the story materializes on the digital field in front of me. It is sitting and pruning words and sentences and even pages so that the shape left more resembles the story I want to tell to other people.
I’ve lost so much of that glee of writing over the years. I started chasing plot over character. I started chasing WPM, which I was starkly reminded of in the sprints yesterday when I managed to hit 68 WPM and felt like an absolute G for long enough to do further analysis of what that meant and how long I could possibly sustain such a speed. The numbers were more important than what was being written, and that told me that I was chasing numbers as a way of chasing a new way of feeling proud of what I was creating, as opposed to feeling proud about creating story itself. That was when I knew I’d gone very far off the path of telling stories.
I need to get back to basics. Stories are what happen to people. I have always meant to write about people first. At some point plotting got in the way. Then I forgot how to write about people. Hell, I forgot how to recognize people for the most part. I closed myself off to interactions and stopped seeing people entirely; instead assuming I knew who they were based on a catalogue I had in my head of who people could be.
To grow, I need to go back to the beginning.
Some Thoughts:
- No thoughts… No I’m NOT gonna see how many words this was in ten either.