Tag: Writing

Musings

Weekly Musing: I Have Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself, Maybe

DH Hanni

Personally, I have a lot of fears and anxieties. Some of which I’ve been able to overcome the past few years as I get older while others I know I will never outgrow. I don’t see that as a bad or good thing. We all have fears and anxieties. It’s how we choose to cope or overcome them that matters.

But this isn’t one of those personal philosophical postings, rather I would like to discuss my professional fears and anxieties. Not so much ‘will I get published?’, ‘when will I get published?’, ‘will people like my work?’, etc. I do feel anxiety about my abilities. All writers and artists do, it’s why we can become quite nutty, but I know I can study how to improve, get advice from fellow writers, listen to the feedback from the writers group I’m in.

There are certain subjects, topics, and types of writing that frighten me: violence, in particular rape, sex scenes, fan fiction (I feel massively childish by wanting to express my dorkiness), unsympathetic characters, abuse in any form, and anything resembling experiences I’ve gone through in real life.

As a reader, I get squeamish at times reading certain scenes or reading experiences of a particular horrible character. If I can, I try to skim these passages even though I know these scenes are part of story and character development. Emotionally, it can be too much to take. Oddly enough, I don’t mind gory horror I guess because I know zombies aren’t real, vampires don’t exist, and there are no such things as werewolves.

But as a writer, I should be paying attention to those uncomfortable scenes. I should be studying the mechanics of the scene. I need to learn to step back from the scene emotionally as a reader, and don the intellectual cap. Does it go too far to make its point? Or does it not go far enough? Is this being done purely for shock value?

There is also the inevitable fear at the back of my head of ‘What will my family and friends think if I write this?’ That is harmful and stifles creativity. Not everybody is going to like my work and that includes family and friends. We each have our own personal tastes. I am merely the tool for the stories and characters in my head. Yes, I do create the stories and characters, to some degree, but even though I may plan out the story, once I sit down to write, the characters are the ones in control. They take turns into areas I hadn’t thought about, do things I don’t want them to do, and yes, some of those are some bad things. When I have tried to reign in some of the bad things, I’ve noticed that just creates a huge impasse. It’s when I start struggling. It’s when the writing feels like it is losing authenticity. And at the end of the day, the story needs to be authentic.

Stephen King, in his book On Writing , mentions receiving an angry letter from a reader accusing him of hating animals. In one of his books, a character kicks a dog to death. The scene was meant to show how brutal the character was, his disregard for life. It was part of character development. It wasn’t inserted in for shock value. He responded by noting he does not dislike animals nor does he advocate animal abuse. The character’s actions were not a reflection of his personal values.

It is incredibly easy as a reader, and I still do it this day, to believe that whatever a writer composes, it is an accurate and true reflection of the writer as a PERSON. I wonder if this is because writers are very often inspired by real-life events either in their own lives, the lives of those around them, or what they read/see. The lines are blurred even more with creative non-fiction which, by its very definition, is true life but with creative twists.

Writing, like all forms of art, can be a very cathartic release but it is important to keep in mind no matter how much a story could be based in the reality, it is NOT the writer’s own personal values on the page. We read stories to follow the paths characters take. We read stories to immerse ourselves in a different world, a different time. We read stories for entertainment. We read stories to reflect on our own moral compass.

In my opinion, the best stories I’ve read are rooted in realism. The characters say and do things I personally would never do but is the truth for the character. I can become sympathetic to a serial killer who murders because he was terribly abused in childhood. I can also become unsympathetic to a passive, mousy character who never stands up for themselves.

So as a writer, I need to work on emotionally allowing myself to push my creativity outside my comfort zone. Like everything else with writing, it is a long, never ending process full of successes and failures.

Musings

Weekly Musing: New Kid on the (Writer’s) Block

DH Hanni

Writer’s block. A thing much lamented by virtually every writer of anything ever. But I personally don’t believe in it so hear me out. Perhaps what I have experienced so far would be defined as writer’s block. That’s not to say I haven’t experienced periods of being stuck or overwhelmed or underwhelmed by something I’m writing, I do. In fact, when trying to choose a topic of this week’s Weekly Musing, I found myself at a lost. I have a list of topics but none of them jumped out at me screaming ‘It’s my turn! Pick me, pick me!’ Alas, the topic of writer’s block bubbled to the surface due in part to the tremendous amount of reading I’ve been doing of late rather than actual writing.

But I was not experiencing writer’s block, at least not in my interpretation.

I define writer’s block as the complete and utterly inability to write anything. Surely a writer has something to say that day, week, or month. It may not be very good or even comprehensible but at least something can be written down. One isn’t committed to the first thing slapped onto paper or hammered out on a keyboard. That’s what revision and editing are for; a chance to rework the miserable dribble that dropped out of your mind. To experience that moment of inspiration and say ‘This is what I meant to say all along but couldn’t quite express correctly until now.’

I certainly have been stuck. One piece in particular it took me 12 drafts and over a year to get it just right. The story I had envisioned in my mind hadn’t quite meshed up with what I had written. I took breaks in between drafts, several weeks usually, to allow my brain to concentrate on other projects until I felt ready enough to take another stab at it. I played around with cutting out huge chunks of the story which is when the story finally started clicking. But never once did I think I was in the midst of writer’s block.

I certainly have been overwhelmed at the challenge of a story. An idea that sounded great in my head has paralyzed me with anxiety and fear as I try to translate that idea into a story. I worry about my ability to do justice to the story and the characters. So, I step away for a few moments, get lost in a Wikipedia or IMDB black hole of celebrity nonsense, before telling myself to just write something down. It is a start and doesn’t have to be a perfect product.

And sometimes you just need to realize a piece may need to be abandoned. It could be a permanent detachment or temporary. I’ve learned not everything I write needs to be revised or polished. I don’t do this for projects I want to submit for a contest or anthology rather for one-shot pieces I felt inspired to write. Sometimes just leaving it as a rough draft is all that it requires. I watched an interview with Jess Walter who spoke about working on and off on a project over several years because he just hadn’t developed the emotional maturity to complete it. Once he felt he was ready, he went ahead and finished the project. Doesn’t sound like writer’s block to me.

In conclusion, I say feel free to rid yourself of the term writer’s block. Your creativity, your ability has not let you down. Just give yourself time to get past the hurdle, the barrier to completing your piece.

Musings

Weekly Musings: A Lost Love

DH Hanni

Over the past few months, a lost love has slinked its way back into my life. But it’s not someone my husband should be worried about, although this love is quite formidable and has been in my life far longer than he could ever hope to be. This love can be found anywhere, sometimes it is small and unassuming, sometimes large and hard to miss. This love covers all things known to man and some only known to aliens. It contains all forms of expression: the good, the great, the bad, and the ugly but only the mind and the heart can make that judgment. My lost love beckons me in the form of ink, paper, pictures, and as of late, me in kilobytes. My lost love is the library.

I’ve had a library card as long as I can remember being eligible for one. Growing up, the library was my favorite place, perhaps in part because it was pretty much the only place I was allowed to go, because it held all these books you could get for free. I don’t remember how many times a week I went to the public library but it had to have averaged at least once a week. I loved looking through the rows of the books, the number of rows expanding as I got older, to find something I hadn’t read. A small thrill would go through me as I raced to get through a stack of books before they were due. Don’t misunderstand, I wasn’t trying to speed read them for the sake of getting through them, no, I wanted to make sure I understood what I read but the added factor of a due date was a challenge for my brain. I imagine it’s the nerdy equivalent to bungee jumping or something.

When I was a teenager, both the public and school libraries were transitioning into installing computers. I didn’t think much of computers. I’d played a few games on them at a friend’s house and occasionally ‘Oregon Trail’ at school although I preferred my gaming to be on a console but other than that, I didn’t see what the big deal was. I was introduced to the Internet as a research tool my junior year of high school. It was still very new, still very slow, and clunky to use. Didn’t help when you misspelled a word resulting in no search results (yes, the Internet didn’t used to ask you if you actually meant something else). As a research tool, I found it inefficient and lacking the kind of information I could find much faster amongst the books. Card catalogs and the Dewey Decimal System for the win!

But an odd thing happened to my love when I went to college. I began to fall out of love with the library. I have determined it was because during college, I read so much for school, that the idea of reading for fun, a function I had associated with the library, was squashed. The library during college was purely a means to find books I, thankfully, didn’t have to pay for in order to complete a paper. Didn’t help the library building was a reflection of hideous 1960s architecture. I’ve been to my alma mater since graduation and am supremely jealous of their gorgeous new library, designed to look like a proper library.

Even upon graduation, the library and reading had lost me as a friend and wouldn’t regain me for a couple of years. We had broken up mutually, silently, to see other people, to spread our wings. If you love something, you must let it go and hope it will return to you.

Slowly, though, I crawled back to my local library for fun and education. Upon entering the doors, inhaling the smell of ink and paper, experiencing that glorious reverent sound of silence, I apologized for my lost faith in the strength of our love.

With the opening of a new branch of the local library system this past week, conveniently close to my house, I am reminded of the power a library has in a community. It opens up worlds to people. It affords glimpses into lives of people we will never meet but who we may oddly feel a kinship to. Libraries, both brick-and-mortar and online, are the keepers of the world’s knowledge. Any time of the day, I can flip through the library’s catalog for book I’ve heard about through some other book I’m reading or via a website. There is even the possibility of contacting a library in another country for materials not available locally.

Yes, the library and I are in love again. When you offer a girl the whole world, how can you turn a suitor down?