SOME WRITERS – AND MOM – SCARE THE DAYLIGHTS OUT OF ME

By El Ochiis

I didn’t grow up with a television, a fact that my High School English teacher stated made me a more creative writer.  She said I had only my imagination – funny, this was the excuse my mother used to justify the reason we were the only people without a square gadget with images flickering through windows of homes along our street in some non-descript small town.

She would often tell the me the story about a man - Tesla - who dreamed of creating a source of inexhaustible, clean energy that was free for everyone. He, like mom, strongly opposed centralized coal-fired power stations that spewed carbon dioxide into the air that humans breathed. Just how mom was going to harness that lightning bolt to convert it to a form that would power her electric stove which she used to bake bread with flour milled using an ancient, home grain milling machine was never fully explained by the dear woman.

 

Mom’s greatest eco belief was that indoor plumbing was killing the fish because of the sewage being drained into rivers and streams.  When you are a kid, idealistic, off-the-grid, hippie-like parents like my mom were just an embarrassment, and, you as the offspring of such parentage was a recipe for getting chased home by the kids whose parents religiously worshipped showers, sinks, toilet bowls, and, multiple televisions.

 

One night, after my crazy mother had demanded that we save the planet by turning off the electric lights and reading a good book, by candlelight. I picked a book, from one of our five shelves, a novel by Harry Max Harrison, born Henry Maxwell Dempsey, entitled: “Make Room, Make Room “– I guess the pen name had a certain writer’s ring to it over his given one. 

 

Harrison was a citizen of both the UK and Ireland who distrusted generals, prime ministers and tax official with sardonic and cruel wit – he made plain his acute intelligence and astonishing range of moral, ethical and literary sensibilities - ah, the kind of writer whose prose would mirror my mom’s eccentric, erudite lunacy, I thought. 

 

I propped up on two pillows and lost myself in a story that explored the consequences of both unchecked population growth on society and the hoarding of resources by a wealthy minority - set in 1999 – thirty-three years after the time of writing - where the trends in the proportion of world resources used by the United States and other countries compared to population growth, depicting a world in which the global population was seven billion people, plagued with overcrowding, resource shortages and a crumbling infrastructure.  Max’s plot jumped from character to character, recounting the lives of people in various walks of life in New York City whose population had reached 35 million.

 

Then, in 1973, a movie, called “Soylent Green”, was made, based on Harrison’s novel. Perhaps influenced by the 1972 heat wave in the Northeast and the oil crisis of the early 1970’s, Soylent Green imagines a sweltering future where the temperature never dips below 90, Margarine spoils in the fridge and sickly fog, similar to London’s historical “pea-soupers,” hangs in the air, forcing the city’s last remaining trees to be shielded under a tent. The film changed much of the plot and theme and introduced cannibalism as a solution to feeding people.

 

Were these calamities the fault of humankind or a natural disaster?  The film isn’t clear, but, in the source novel, it’s implied to be the former.  After sitting through the movie in college; I rang mom to tell her about it, for which she chimed “Some of those writers are prophesiers.”  She sent me a window solarium so I could grow my own food.

 

I was petrified after reading Max Harrison’s novel, that is, until I picked up Mick Jackson’s “Threads”, written in 1984 – an unflinching account of nuclear holocaust – one that guessed how ugly we might become if we continue to allow ourselves to be run by greed. 

 

The elite of “Soylent Green” had a novel way to unwind:  video games – in luxury apartment of a Soylent board member, a sleek cabinet contains Computer Space, which, in real-life 1971 had become the very first coin-operated arcade game.  Ah, but we've avoided pushing the big red launch button; We're too happy to keep pushing the buttons on our digital devices instead.

 

Mom’s not here to witness the iPhone or the laptop, but she left me a legacy of books by writers who had predicted the future of most of it – and, quite frankly, I am too afraid to stop reading them – though, somewhat relieved mom didn’t take to that 1936 Underwood Model 6 Typewriter she inherited from her grandmother and banged out her own stories – she wasn’t going to call them sci-fi either…

Excess

 by Lis Anna-Langston 

When I lived in Wisconsin, I used a Marilyn Manson CD as an ice scraper. My friends acted like it was a commentary on the music. I liked the CD a lot, had listened to it a lot, and then one day, stuck between ice and a hard place, I repurposed that MTV-award-winning beauty into a practical tool.

It’s what writers do.

Mechanical Animals turned out to be an excellent ice scraper. Durable. Easy to maneuver. Perfect at removing ice without scratching the windshield and came with a handy case sporting great artwork. It appealed to all my writerly senses. Mechanical Animals is an album full of excess. So is the process of writing.

Repurpose. Recycle. Reuse. These are terms we hear daily. In art and writing, they very much apply.

We’re always going to have excess. That section you cut from a short story, or chapter you really loved. Can it be expanded into a piece of flash? A series of vignettes you can create under a certain theme? That chapter you love in your current work in progress. Can you polish it and submit it as its own stand-alone piece? Fragments of writing exercises? What images, symbols, visuals do these conjure? Can they be memes? Key marketing materials? A new story built from another?

Later, after I moved to North Carolina, I had a roommate/close friend from Cuba. He repurposed EVERYTHING. I’d be standing in the front yard holding a cup of coffee with my nose scrunched, asking, “Why don’t you just buy a new one?”

In the late winter light, he’d turn to make eye contact with me like I’d just sprouted six wings and four heads. I came to learn that, because of the embargos, Cubans definitely didn’t live in a shopping mall culture. If something broke, you fixed it. If you were tired of something, you transformed it into a new item. I knew something about this, growing up in one of the poorest places in Mississippi. Poor wasn’t a term we used. That was for outsiders. For insiders, we knew how to do a lot with a little.

So, what about that line you absolutely loved that had to be cut? Can you start a new writing exercise with the line? Create a catchy piece of digital art? Take all the edits you loved and group them together to create a new project?

Part of repurposing is discernment. The ability to recognize that something isn’t a piece of the story puzzle you’re working on and quietly put it away or transform it into a new piece entirely. I once took the cuts from a novel and created a new novel. It went on to win ten book awards. All because I saw the process of elimination as an opportunity.

Writing is a process of discovery. At least, it is for me. Keeping notebooks and showing up to the page every day means you’ll likely end up with more material than you need for one project. So, every now and then, when you’re not feeling the fit of the raw drift, polished draft, fully realized draft, take up the challenge and shift into seeing those old pieces with fresh perspective. There is opportunity in excess.

Procrastination

by Sharon May

 

Here I am drafting a blog on procrastination the Sunday morning of submission day. What are the odds? I committed to writing this a month ago but didn’t start a draft in all that time. Instead, I mulled the topic, considering what to say and how to start. A few days ago, I jotted down ideas I wanted to include, though today I declared them useless.

 

I am a procrastinator of the finest ilk. It is my roadblock to productivity, and I am far from being in recovery. My writing routine is so ingrained that I’m almost convinced it’s my “style.” I mean, it has served me fairly well since high school, having won awards for my work. Notice: I’m just rationalizing.

 

We all have our own methods of avoidance. No fretting on my part, and I may not appear to be procrastinating because I immediately ponder, read, and research the topic as necessary. It’s almost obsessive thinking, as I talk over my ideas over with family and friends, whomever I can corral, and I listen to their thoughts on the subject as well, bouncing them all around in my head until it’s time to sit down at the laptop. No matter the project – long or short, major or minor – I wait until the last minute to write, and even determine how last minute the writing will be by setting a deadline for drafting. Telling me to start early is not really useful as I’m stuck in the beginning.

 

I’ve been writing other works, but not so much that it prevented me from completing this task. So, I’ve taken approximately 28 days to write 500 words. I could have knocked it out on any one of those days. Instead, I surfed the Internet for articles on writers’ procrastinating, watched several men’s and women’s basketball games, and who knows what else I’ve done in that time period beyond the typical activities of living. Then I took a five-day vacation out of town, during which I did no writing.

 

When my deadline arrived, I started my usual avoidance routine -- slept late rather than obey the alarm I had set, had a leisurely breakfast, took care of the cats, and chatted with a couple of friends who are also early risers. At the computer, I fought the urge to clean my workspace, though I couldn’t resist checking my email. Finally, I opened a blank document and begged the muses for words. Fortunately, the muse does finally come and words appear on the page.

 

Procrastination can be a matter of priorities. It’s how we choose to live in the moment, and procrastinators live without considering the consequences. My choices make me less productive than I could be, though I can convince myself that I’m always working. I keep trying to set goals and deadlines to move me to more seat time, but habits are stubborn.

 

How do you measure procrastination?

On the Bedside Table

By Bonnie Stanard

 

I've been asked where I get my inspiration to write. It has taken a while, but I've figured out a response, which comes as close to an answer as I can get. More times than not, my ideas come from books. There's always a book on my bedside table (currently The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, and The Lottery by Shirley Jackson).

 

Several years ago I read Rest in Pieces by Bess Lovejoy and didn't realize at the time that a chapter about Moliere would eventually inspire a novel.

 

Rest in Pieces recounts the adventures of Moliere's corpse. The famous French actor was stricken on stage, was removed to a house across the street, and died shortly thereafter. At the time, the Catholic Church condemned actors. Most of them renounced their profession to a priest just before dying to get a Christian burial. However, Moliere died without a priest. No Christian burial for him. Louis XIV intervened and the Church relented and allowed a burial at night somewhere in St. Joseph's cemetery, but nobody marked the site. Even his wife, upon returning to the cemetery, couldn't find his grave. His body was lost. But an idea grew and my novel found his grave and a character stole his skull. I have Lovejoy's book to thank for sending my imagination off to France in 1672.

 

Here's a thought I'm having now. At present I'm working on another historical fiction about a person being held in a prison-like chamber of a chateau. It's become a challenge to develop this story, given a situation in which nothing happens. When I mentioned this to a friend, he enthusiastically recommended a book with just such a plot—"A Gentleman in Moscow," which he said was a story about a man held prisoner in a hotel. I've ordered a copy but do I dare read it now? Will it unduly influence what I hope will be my story? Might I subconsciously copy from that story?

 

We subconsciously and unconsciously and deliberately take information from books, which is one reason why we should read authors whose work we admire. We might find in another book a person, place, or plot that motivates us to develop a story.

 

If that happens, it won't be the first time. Take a look at writers who based their work on previously published book.

 

The Hours by Michael Cunningham on Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Wolfe.

Ulysses by James Joyce on The Odyssey by Homer

March by Geraldine Brooks takes a character from Little Women

Robinson Caruso re-written by J.M. Coetzee (Foe) and Michel Tournier (Friday)

 

From Steven King comes advice that doesn't grow old: "Read, read, read. You have to read widely, constantly refining (and redefining) your own work as you do so. If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write."