Road Trips: The Ultimate Writer’s Block Cure

By Kasie Whitener

The return journey was 548 miles, nine hours, all interstate, and took the better part of a Monday with no other plans. Coming off a U2 concert in Philadelphia, Father’s Day spent with Dad and my sister, the distance was worth it.

Rain splattered the windshield and the radio sang U2 songs from the Greatest Hits album. The Jeep barreled along, 70- to 80-miles-per-hour, chewing up the distance and carrying us home. The Shenandoah mountains rolled around us like vibrant green waves undulating on a fresh, damp sea. Meadows laced with wire fences and dotted with rolled hay arched into the sunlight, pulling away from tree pocket borders of dark summer shade.

“I want to run,” sang the radio, “I want to hide. I want to tear down the walls that hold me inside. I want to reach out and touch the flame. Where the streets have no name.”

When I talk about how many miles I put on the Jeep, how long I spend behind the wheel on road trips, people marvel. For some, road travel is something to be dreaded: a necessary evil in the vacation plans, an alternative to pricey flights.

For me, road trips are freedom.

When life is muddied with details and obligations, a good road trip sets me free.

I love the churn of the miles, green paddles lining the road ticking of the distance, pushing mental math through me as I calculate time and speed.

I love the interplay of trucks and minivans and cruise control and passing lanes.

I love the sleepy exit towns with mom-and-pop lunch buffets and 1980s-era gas pumps.

I’ve been driving that route – I-77 through Charlotte to I-81 through Roanoke and Lexington and Harrisonburg to I-66 through Manassas – for more than 20 years. It’s aged with me. I know its turns and speed traps like it knows my moods and frustrations. When the truck traffic gets heavy south of Staunton, it breaks into a third lane to ease the pressure.

Road trips break open the nostalgia in me, let it bleed over the today-ness and tomorrow-plans that consume me. I remember family trips and Dad blaming his farts on passing trucks. I remember college trips and the ‘Songs to Bellow To’ mixed tape.

The road between where I am now and where I used to be is stacked with when-I-stopped-there stories and almost every mile of the journey from South Carolina to Northern Virginia has some perfect detail I should write down someday.

I get more from the road than I give it. The road answers questions for me.

What does the character want? To be valued.

What is the story missing? Raise the stakes.

Like a writing coach, the road talks me through the work I left on the laptop on the desk in the house far away. The road stretches out, teasing the details from the work, offering perspective, offering freedom, offering inspiration, until I return and create.

States of Mind

By Sharon May

Kurt Vonnegut said, “You cannot be a good writer of serious fiction if you are not depressed.”

The main problem I have with this statement is that it reinforces the stereotype of the crazy artist who locks himself away from society in the name of art. It is a stereotype that many societies use to keep the writer at bay, out of the mainstream. Maybe there is a hint of madness in all of us as we respond to what drives us to write but to say only those who are depressed can produce serious and good works is extreme and just not true.

Second, what is “serious fiction?” I assume that Vonnegut is referring to what we now call literary fiction. By his standards, I’m sure that lots of genre fiction would be automatically be labeled as not serious. But all genres have works so well written they stand out from the crowd and are serious.

Third, does Vonnegut mean that one has to be depressed at the time of writing the fictional work, or simply be subject to depressive states of mind? Usually part of the definition of depression is a time period in which the person is usually not functioning well and probably is not capable of writing any fiction, serious or not. I think all writers have emotional struggles that give them opportunities to contemplate themselves and the society. These struggles do not have to lead to depression for one to be a serious writer.

Yes, we have Styron, Kafka, Woolf, Rowling, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Capote, and Baldwin as examples of writers with depressive personalities who produced serious fiction. But we could list even more writers who have never been depressed.

I am bipolar and have found during depressed moods that I am not productive enough to write anything, good or bad. I may be able to think about writing, but I can’t find the energy to put fingers to keyboard. Maybe others who are depressed can put words on a page. I just know I’m not one of them. But I am capable of writing when in a manic state, reams and reams very quickly. Unfortunately, quality is not in those reams even though they do provide good ideas to work on later. Only when I’m stable can I consistently produce words on paper that would be considered good.

Emotions can lead to a particular state of mind that can cause problems for the writer. Hopefully, you do not have to inhabit Vonnegut’s world as you write. Regardless of your state of mind, pay attention to your emotional struggles and observe those of others so you can learn about human nature, which will lead to interesting characters, dialogue, conflicts, and thus good writing.   

Role of Narrator

By Bonnie Stanard

Most of us in workshop choose to narrate our stories either from first person or third person limited, but I’m attempting an omniscient point of view (POV) with an historical fiction story.

When we talk about an omniscient narrator, there’s quite a difference between writers of the 21^st Century and those of the 19^th century. It has to do with the distance the narrator establishes between himself and his story.

While omniscient narrators such as Dickens, Hardy, and Twain wrote with the confidence of a reporter, the progression has moved away from perceived “facts” and toward the articulation of our interior being. This approach to telling a story was ushered in by James Joyce’s groundbreaking Ulysses and was made accessible by Virginia Wolfe’s novels.

NARRATIVE DISTANCE

The closing of this distance between narrator and character evolved in tandem with a changing cultural climate. The unity of traditions of the 19^th century has been eroded by the coming of modern science and technology, which have in turn brought into question parameters of every sort. Once we thought time and motion had exactitude, that the real world was stable. Since Einstein, we’ve discovered the fluidity of reality. Even things like age, sex, and morality have become relative. Readers are suspect of the facts of other people, be they artists, preachers, politicians or novelists.

As the complexity of daily life adds to our ambivalence, writers have pushed ever closer to the workings of human thought and consciousness. This includes narrators of omniscient, first person, and third limited POV.

An aside on POV: if a writer doesn’t understand the role of a narrator, it is obvious in his work. The most common error is “head hopping” which is blindly telling a story in buckshot fashion. That is to say, the writer doesn’t know who his narrator is.

CHAOS AND TECHNOLOGY

Two last thoughts on why narrators are changing. Over 80 per cent of Americans live in urban areas. The average reader no longer lives or works near nature. The urban experience has ushered in congestion and chaos, which have driven narrators to focus inward.

At the same time, the novelist’s portrayal of our physical surroundings has been usurped by ubiquitous visual media. Narrators of contemporary fiction who describe typical settings are competing with images we see on television and computers. You can guess where that leaves the writer.

Regardless of how beleaguered we are by our environment; or how much scenery we see on the screen; or how much dialogue we hear in movies and television, there’s little communication of the interior life of humans. This is where writers can be important.

Co-Writing a Screenplay, Part 1

By Laura P. Valtorta

www.gattafilms.com

www.thearthousemovie.webs.com

laurapv.wordpress.com

                                     

Yesterday Marco and I went to see a reading of Anthony Lamarr’s stage play Calming the Man at the Richland County Public Library on Main Street. The actors were from New Life Productions, a group I worked with to put on my play, Bermuda. Once again I was struck by the talent of the actors we have in Columbia.

Sharn Hopkins is the head of New Life Productions, and I am proposing that we write a screenplay together. Both of us are hard-headed women, so I wonder how this can work. I’ve never sat down with someone else to work on a writing project. Producing a film takes a team of people, but writing is something personal.

Our first meeting about the screenplay is next Thursday. I’ve prepared by collecting a list of ideas for plots. How can we write about conflict between a so-called ‘black’ woman and a so-called ‘white’ woman and make it funny and real? There is only one human race, but we segregate ourselves in the United States based on skin color. This creates huge problems. Art can deal with the issue better than almost anything except a change in the law.

I wonder about toning down my bossiness. This project will only work if Sharn also shows up with a briefcase of ideas. I can count on her to have an opinion, which is what I need. Push-back is key. If my ideas are stupid, she needs to say so. And I need the freedom to be honest with her.

Other concepts besides skin color will enter into this. Religion – what role does it play? I’ve never run away from religion, but I am an agnostic. Sharn belongs to a local congregation. She does not believe in using curse words. My favorite radio show is Howard Stern.

Recently I traveled to Cuba, where there is no segregation based on skin color. Looking around the streets of Havana and Cienfuegos, it was difficult to see a couple or a husband and wife who shared the same skin color. You don’t often see two white people together or two black people at a market unless they are tourists. Cuban families are every shade of white-brown-black all within the same household. The relief is palpable. There is no color line. That’s the kind of screenplay I’m aiming for.