Perfection

A friend of mine is a perfectionist. What makes it even worse, she is a poet and a novelist. She does not live very far from me and now that I am finally home I see her slaving away in her office not far from my house trying to find the perfect word for a perfect poem everyday. The last poem she wrote took a year for her to finish. Her first and only novel took her ten years to write. The good side to her work habits is she got her book published and it did well which is a good thing because she has been working on her second book since then and it is half finished and that was ten years ago.

My problem is what is written in my head is not what ends up on the page. I go round and round trying to put down what is between my ears on the computer screen and it never matches what I know is the real story. Sometimes, I give up and turn off the computer and go out for coffee or go hiking up at the lake. In Korea, I could not do that. I also could not find a book to read. Unless I wrote it, I did not find anything to read, so I wrote it. I also could not find many people to talk with in English or any other language I could speak.

We are often trained in the west to regard ourselves as faulty and guilty. It goes along with the Christian tradition of being born in sin. No matter what some writers put down, they are convinced it is wrong and not good enough. Heaven knows, I fall into this category. Part of my writer's block consists of not being good enough to be published or putting something out there that people would hate.

Perfection is a self-imposed set of rules and beliefs that some of us put on and it is rigid and stiff and does not fit anyone. In these set of molds, no one is good enough. Remember the parable about it being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven? It was dreamed up by some poor scribe to help poor people feel better about themselves but made everyone think how no one was getting into heaven.

I wish I knew a magic portion that would enable writers to just put the words down and do your best and fuck everyone who don't like it. If I knew that magic portion, I would take it too. There is always going to be someone who will say this stinks and that is no good and that is not right for this publication and that is not right for this time and on and on. I wrote something the other day that made me feel like my last car, about two inches tall. My sons sold it to a wrecking yard. The only thing I could do was breath in and breath out.

A Nobel Prize winning writer stayed in his room for two weeks because of a bad review for his last book because he was convinced everyone was talking about him and how bad the book was. Then he found out from his neighbor that the magazine where it appeared never made it into the small village they lived in because of a storm in the mountains. Then the writer worried about the magazine coming in after the storm subsided. Enough is enough. I would have thought a Nobel Prize was enough to give some relief from this perfection and low self-esteem.

If I don't write the books that are in my head, they will stay in my head and die when I do. I care about my fictional characters and don't want that to happen to them. I also don't want that for stories that are in other writers' heads. Everything we as writers write has the potential of not being liked by some reader. That can't be helped. I know of another writer who wrote a book that had limited sales. It was science fiction and 14th of others he wrote and he could never give up his day job of selling suits in a large men's warehouse. Yet, he found out from his publisher that a man was going to kill himself one night but read his book instead and credited his book with saving his life and turning it around. It made a difference to him and helped him write the next one.

Try and push the keys, send that pen across the paper pad or whatever it takes to write your stories and novels. If the monkey of perfection lands on your shoulders and it will, punch it in the groin and keep going. What else are you going to do?

Writing down the sorrow

I have always kept a journal. I am one of those who love doing it. When I taught writing and English, I encouraged it and never graded the content of it. I was always hoping that people would discover the joy of writing everyday because it definitely has its advantages. I meditate every morning and long incorporated writing into my form of meditation. I adjusted it to fit me. I think that is what each of us should do.

I always felt that there were people who had inner directed lives and those who needed direction from an outer source. I am one of those who sought direction from within. It was a given when I discovered Buddhism even before I knew its name that I would follow that tradition as the Dharma or the teachings come from within and not from any official source and the same goes for Taoism. I am not saying that those who need a book such as the Bible are wrong. No, it is a different path and all paths lead to the same thing in the end.

For me, writing is a basic form of my spiritual practice. When sorrow hits as it often does each of us, I have always found my journal to be a source of great relief and comfort. The Dharma teaches me truths that helps me in this regard. The purists in these religions are forever correcting me in many of my use of terms and concepts. Again, I am comfortable in my individual practice and don't much care about getting "it right" according to certain tradition. I just don't think it is all that important. It is the effect that is important. My beliefs change over the years and I am fine with that too.

Yesterday, someone was very angry at her situation in life and to lash out at the anger that was given to her threw some on me. It hurt me very badly, but I was determined not to let the anger and sorrow that I felt, not travel any further. At least this portion stopped with me. It felt as if someone took a knife and stabbed me with it. It hurt because I care about certain people and it involved those people. I had to go over the situation and visit my part in it. In the past, I did react to her with anger so that part I was guilty. The rest I was not. I felt really bad. I felt as if my Christmas was ruined.

I took my journal out and started to write. I wrote and wrote and soon I was able to leave the emotions that I had felt on the page. I drew pictures and left more on the page. Then I began to remember the things that my own Buddhist traditions and Dharma had taught me. Soon, I was doing other things and started to enjoy the holiday. I had just gotten back from Korea and was alone. However, I really wasn't alone. Soon, I was doing what I wanted to do. It is seeing life from another perspective.

When I was in Korea, I did not have a television so I did not watch it. I could not get the programs that I followed here in this country. I love the program, Eureka. I watched a program on Hulu that I could not watch there either. It was about the sheriff not being able to leave the town of Eureka and being stuck there during Christmas. Someone had left a hydrogen crystal that seemed to be growing bigger and the scientist had disappeared. Then they looked at it from a different perspective and the crystal wasn't growing at all. The town was shrinking. Well, Sheriff Carter and his common sense yet again gets Eureka out of another mess. The program made me laugh. I stopped feeling sorry for myself.

It is amazing how much people like to control others. That includes setting up rules for other people including writers. When I started this blog for writers, I thought I was like other writers and maybe I am except I don't believe in all of those rules. I do believe in journals and in writing meditation at least for me. I never know what I feel and think about certain things until I write about it. Journals help me keep a more organized mind. When I was a social worker, I used to get in trouble all of the time from my supervisor for having a messy desk. I never cared to have one that was super clean and sterile. I cared about the people in my caseload. I never have nightmares about them as my supervisor did and had to eventually quit.

Sorrow and joy will come. They are very transitory. They never stay for long. Writing about them helps when one becomes almost unbearable and the other forgettable.

The Writing Process

I was reading a blog today about when you should use certain point of view. I thought the essay was well-written and it made a lot of sense except that I never go through that process when deciding what point of view to use. The comments at the end of the article were very positive as was mine except that I never sit down and decide what point of view I am going to use. I let my characters decide. It just depends on what story is and what the characters want to do.

My story or plot is character driven. That is how I started my writing career. I began by developing the who the main character was that I was going to write about. I formulated that person in my mind with a past and present. Usually, there was a pressing problem facing that character and in my story the character or protagonist was going to try to resolve it. How this was done by the character decided the point of view.

If my character, Tommie for example in a story that I am working on now, has a problem trying to figure out why she can't seem to get men to like her. She is attractive and intelligent and has a normal family background. It is such a mystery and the character wanted to tell the reader in detail how normal she is in every way. She went on and on about visiting therapists and asking people about it and no one had a clue except to say there was no problem. It was obvious the way Tommie kept talking to the reader that the story was a first person narrative. She wanted people to see she was normal when it was evident something was a miss. Then slowly the reader could begin to see by the way the character talked what the problem could be. The question is at this point is whether or not Tommie is going to figure it out for herself and what she is going to do about it. The layers are peeled by Tommie herself and the reader sees the truth before the protagonist does.

Another story is about two people both deep in personal tragedy can't see what is happening around them. It takes a supernatural event to knock their depressive glasses off. Both of the characters are not talking to themselves or each other. First person point of view is not what they want. They want the point of view of the third person so that the reader can see all of the events happening and how what is happening on the outside world is connected to the inside world. Again, the reader sees it before they do.

In my stories, the reader is often privy to what is happening before the characters. I just follow along and write what is happening. Sometimes, the main character can reason it out for themselves and sometimes has to be told. I like stories in which there is some transformation takes place. I guess I remember the tough times in my life when I got hints on what to do in my own tough circumstances when a character in a book went through a similar situation and what they did to survive. The stories in which one point of my wall took the hits from thrown books were ones in which a person went through all kinds of trauma and the resolution was a new romance walking or I should say waltzing through the door. How realistic is that?

I am the kind of writer that lets the inner writer loose. I also let my characters loose as well. I figure they all know what should be happening best. Of course I buttress all of this with a fairly substantial amount of reading of other writers and the daily exercise of journal writing and of course the heavy so-called indulgence of dreaming of stories in my head. I can't tell you that huge amount of training that gave me. Most of all, it all feels very comfortable to me.

I let myself tell me what is right and what is not. Maybe that puts me into the camp of the instinctive writer. I don't know. I do know that I have read many writers who often say the same. They just put the pen on the paper or the fingers on the keys and just start to write. I try not to think too much about it and make it more difficult than it has to be.

Twitter

I have been hearing about Twittering for a while but really did not know exactly what it was. Well, not wanting to be behind the times, so to speak, I looked up the web site. It was explained what Twittering was all about in a video on that site. It was free to sign up, and I did. It was also easy to do.

I thought I needed some special device, and I don't. I am using my computer. I am not going to us the phone that I am using here in Korea as it will be given back to the university that provided it to me in a few days. I will have to ask about Twittering when I get a phone in the States next week. I already know what brand I will be getting as I had a phone before I came and liked it very much. I only use a cell phone for emergencies. I will use the phone service as a land line my son has off his Internet service.

So far, it has been interesting reading all the information that is available on my Tweeter account. I am following those sites having to do with reading, writing, and other sites that looked interesting including my grandson. He is the only one from my family that has a Tweeter account. My oldest son doesn't even have Facebook. Good heavens! How retro.

When I was my grandson's age, I would have been astonished at all of the electronic devices that I use everyday. I would not have even dreamed them up. Now, it is a reality. Who knows what will exist in a few years?

As I wrote, I follow web sites having to do with writing. One gives story prompts. In creating stories, plots, and so on I just create the characters and then follow them as they jaunt through their paces. Who knows what they are going to do? I tried writing a story that was based on a story idea first and it became so boring to me that I gave it up. Everyone does their writing from a different point of view and does it according to their own tastes and methods. Those methods are all valid. Heck, as long as they work one should go for it. I never use a outline although I did for the first book that I wrote. Some writers swear by them. I say just use what works for you.

Right now, Twittering is working for me. If it stops working for me, I will give it up. If you have a lot of followers be careful what you write down and make sure it is accurate. One person that is in the news Twitters (is that capitalized?) before editing her message. I think my "pencil" is my best friend even in the Twittering game.

Writer's Block

I think every writer has had writer's block at one time or another. I know that I have had this problem through the years. Luckily, I was able to work on my journal and keep that going.

Since coming to Korea, I don't have writer's block as a whole. I discovered that if I had some issues that needed to be looked at in my inner world, I needed to take some time off from writing my book and do some journaling and then I would find that the writer's block would be gone.

In clothes, one size does not fit all. I don't expect what works for me is going to work for others. I am finding that being here in Korea is proving to be one long exploration of my inner world. That may sound egotistical but that is all part of what makes me a writer. If what is happening to me is interfering in my writing, I can't work. I have to work out the problems that life's lessons are showing me.

Because I have been able to deal with some of my memories and past experiences, I have discovered that I have room to do other things such as art. My journal is now full of drawings and far more than there were before. I am even better than I used to be. I am no grand master of the arts, but I like what I do in my journal even if the perspective is still a bit off.

I guess what I am trying to say in a long winded way is when a writer can't work on something he or she needs to look at the reason why the writing stopped. I know if I am writing a book or story and it suddenly it can't progress any further, one reason can be I took a wrong turn and have to unravel the story back to where I liked it. Maybe it is because I need to look what is happening to me at the present time. I don't want to stay away from a writing project too long or it gets "cold". Sometimes, I write in my journal what the motivations of the characters are because I get too involved in the characters and forget where I am. Sometimes, I need to go outside and draw the cat or the lake surrounded by mountains. I find dreams very important in telling me what is wrong. Waking up and grabbing a journal and recording a dream helps me too. I always put down what flashes in my mind at that point.

The most important thing a writer does is breath. Meditation is important and life is even more. Sometimes that is all I can do is watch my breath and feel pretty good I can still do it. Everything changes. Nothing stays forever including writer's block. Just keep writing in your journal. Always do that every day even if it is "whoever is a very good writer. "