Defeating the Blank Page with Misty Berries, Webs, and Fading Outlines

By Amanda Simays

Some people can start typing the beginning of a story and write all the way through until the end. I am not one of those people. Blinking cursors on blank Word documents intimidate me. How do you turn an idea for a scene into a fully-written one? Everyone has to find their own system, but here are a few strategies that work for me:

1.      Warm up by playing with words

Here’s a carefully crafted poem revealing fundamental truths about the dichotomy between nature and civilization in modern society with lots of metaphors about mankind’s philosophical state of being:

Long went the afternoon banquets

Tasting nothing

Hanging the misty berries

Along our still-ensphered home

Cold, pretty eyelids

Underneath rivers of flame ribbons

Never there

Very real

I lied. There are no metaphors in that poem, and it doesn’t mean anything at all. It’s just an exercise I do sometimes to get into the mode of writing. I flip open a random page of a random book on my shelf and write down the last word of every single line on the page. Then I play around with words, stringing as many of them together into a nonsense poem. There’s something fun and low-stress about putting words together in a way at first glance might deceive a fifteen-year-old editor of a high school literary journal into thinking that I’m saying something deep about the emotional turmoil inside my soul. But more importantly, it’s a warm-up—now the part of my brain that twists words and creates phrases is turned on.

2.      Brainstorm webs

I’m not a linear thinker, especially when it comes to creative exercises. Even an outline is too constraining of a medium for me to start out with. So instead, I open up a blank page in my notebook and make a web, jotting down phrases as they come to mind, connecting them with lines, letting my thoughts sprawl all over the page. It’s a lot easier for me to generate thoughts in this manner…there’s no pressure to start at the beginning and go through until the end. Only after I’m done this exercise do I turn my notes into a sequential outline. I try to fill up an entire page when I do this because 1) it pushes me to generate more raw material than I might otherwise do, and 2) filling up an entire page with notes like this aesthetically looks really cool. 

3.      Let the outline fade into a story

To me, this is the easiest way to solve the blank-page-anxiety problem—simply start with a page that isn’t blank. I take whatever outline or notes I have and copy and paste them into a new document. Then I flesh out my outline, adding in every detail that comes to mind, plugging every scrap of dialogue or piece of imagery into the appropriate spot. I keep doing this, adding and adding, until suddenly I’m not just writing phrases but sentence fragments…then whole sentences…and then eventually the outline starts to morph into properly-written scene. For me, this is the coolest part about writing. It’s like watching those “behind the scenes” DVD extras for an animated movie where they show a cartoon animal drawn in pencil morph into a full-color, smooth-lined animated sequence.

Werewolves, Cinnamon Bun Pirates, and Other Ghosts of My Writing Past

By Amanda Simays

My parents are moving out of the house they’ve lived in for twenty years. Which of my belongings do I discard, and which do I make them lug to their new house and store for me until God knows when? My attempts to weed out parts of my childhood bedroom over Christmas taught me a lot about my priorities. Stuffed animals, summer camp t-shirts, graduation paraphernalia? Toss without a backward glance. But my packrat tendencies kicked in when it came to really valuable stuff like old American Girl magazines, my collection of 1967 World Book encyclopedias…and anything I’ve written.

I hang onto almost all of my writing, whether it’s in a notebook or a computer file. Partly because it represents a lot of hard work, but mostly because (to use a cliché), I’m scared to throw out the baby with the bathwater. What if, buried deep in the piles of writing rubbish, there’s a character, a line of dialogue, or even a phrase I might want to use someday?

During the creation of a 150-page novel I wrote when I was about fourteen, I also ended up with an 80-page rival document of deleted scenes. Most of the writing there I can’t see using in the future at all. There is, for instance, a long, digressive subplot about a pirate who’s so obsessed with eating cinnamon buns that even his name, Nubni Mannic, is “cinnamon bun” spelled backwards…and incorrectly. But the description of a character who has “greasy hair the color of a banana bruise?" Hmmm…worth hanging onto…just in case.

Even earlier in my past, my brother approached me with a request to write him a werewolf story, and his instructions were to “make it as scary as possible.” So I did, and it was very scary. You can tell how scary this story is right from the subtle opening:

Hi! My name is Billy. I’d like to tell you something. It all began four years ago when I was eight. One day I was packing for my camping trip with my mom and dad in the mountains. My family just got a new van and station wagon.

We were done packing and we were ready to hit the road. On our way we saw some blood on the road and some dead peoples heads. We saw some signs that said “DANGER."

The story just goes downhill from there, degenerating into a thousand-word gore fest. My brother and I read the story out loud to our dad, expecting him to shiver with fright and proclaim it a masterpiece of suspense. Instead, he was completely disgusted and gave me strict instructions to delete that story and never show anybody.

But I didn’t, and years later, I’m glad I kept it. At the very least, hanging onto very bad writing gives me reassurance of how far I’ve come in the course of my writing life…or lets me have a good laugh at myself.

7-38-55

By Amanda Simays

If a Snapple iced tea cap tells me that average humans eat eight spiders in their sleep, I can roll my eyes and move on. But it’s harder to dismiss a statistic that I’ve had drilled into me during three separate job-related trainings, through speakers, handouts, quizzes, and public speaking videos.

I’m talking about the 7-38-55 rule, the one that states that 7% of communication is the actual words we use, 38% of communication is the tone we use, and 55% of communication is our body language. And I just couldn’t believe it.

I’ve lived through enough misconstrued text messages and emails to attest to the fact that tone and body language play a vital role in communication. But accounting for 38 and 55%? Really?

My hang-up over this statistic connects to my writing. I sprinkle details about tone and body language into my dialogue, but for large chunks I rely solely on the quoted words to deliver my message. If this 7-38-55 statistic were true, it had some scary implications. Theoretically, the dialogue I wrote often communicated only 7% of what I meant.

The more I thought about it, the more ridiculous that seemed. Did the 7-38-55 rule mean that writers should spend 93% of dialogue text space describing tone and body language? Or did it just mean that with every single statement a character spoke, I needed to illustrate the tone and the body language so the reader could understand what I meant?

According to the way my trainings presented the 7-38-55 theory, readers would only get 7% of what I intended if I wrote:

“I am so fed up with your attitude!” Jane said.

Add some body language for almost two-thirds of the gist (62%):

“I am so fed up with your attitude!” Jane said, stomping her feet.

Then all I would need to do is throw in a helpful adverb to acknowledge the tone, and then the readers get 100% of the message:

“I am so fed up with your attitude!” Jane said angrily, stomping her feet.

Ohhhh….now they get the point.

The 7-38-55 rule bugged me enough to do some research, and I found several websites exposing the “7-38-55 myth”…a frequently misquoted statistic. The 7-38-55 rule originated with an experiment conducted by psychology professor Albert Mehrabian, and the numerical conclusion only relates when you’re forming a like-dislike attitude of the speaker, not whether you understand the message. Bottom line: no official scientific study ever claimed that the words you use comprise only 7% of the information you communicate.

I like to partially blame residual effects of being brainwashed by that statistic for times when I don’t trust the words on the page to stand on their own, overusing adverbs, obtrusive speaker attributions, or clichéd body language. On the other hand, there is a kernel of truth buried in the 7-38-55 rule—the fact that I can’t rely completely on the quoted words to portray meaning. I still have to remember to visualize how my characters act, what faces they make, how their voices sound, and what they think about while they speak.

Finding the balance isn’t easy, and it’s something I’m working on. But I’m relieved to know that I can count on the words I use in dialogue for more than 7% of the legwork.

“Bing, I’m a Beast!” and Other Lessons I’ve Learned from my Eighth-Graders

By Amanda Simays

It’s the end of the school year, the time when middle schoolers have to reflect on what they’ve learned, and it always means a lot when my students tell me that I’ve helped them with their writing. It occurred to me that it’s been a two-way street—my kids have also taught me a lot about writing too.


From Ethan (Names have been changed): Get into it

Some of my favorite moments at school have been working with Ethan, because he gets into his writing. Whenever he finishes a paragraph or writes a line he’s particularly proud of, he’ll shout, “Bing, I’m a beast!” and then we’ll high-five and fist-bump.

I love watching the way he can ride on the high of what he’s already written to help himself write some more. It makes me want to apply that to my own efforts. I don’t literally punch the air and yell, “Bing, I’m a beast!”, but there’s something to be said for privately celebrating that moment when you finally get the word you’ve been looking for, or you mentally land on the missing piece in the plot puzzle.

From Crystal: Persevere

Crystal has amazed me with her ability to persevere with her writing. It’s happened often that the bell will ring for her to switch from English to Art, and she’ll choose to give up the fun elective class to stay in the library because she’s on a roll. She’ll sometimes continue pecking away at her essay on the computer for a two-hour stretch. A couple months ago, we collaborated on a contest together, and she uncomplainingly came in every day during recess to write with me.

I think about her a lot on nights when I feel too tired or lazy to write. If a fourteen-year-old can give up recess and her elective class to write school assignments, I should be able to find the motivation to sacrifice my own time for writing too.

Keisha: Share your work

Keisha was bored by her latest five-paragraph theme prompt: “If you could have any wish granted, what would it be and why?” What she really needed was a change in perspective, so I tried to get across to her that a wish could be anything—a job, a vacation, a superpower…

“I could be invisible!” she said suddenly, and then we started laughing over the awesome things you could do if you were invisible—spy on people and play all sorts of practical jokes. Keisha’s pencil started flying across the paper. She was so excited about her opening paragraph that she dragged me around the school so she could show her essay to her seventh grade English teacher…her sixth grade English teacher…her band teacher…the hall monitor…

Writing is a solitary activity by nature, but helping Keisha with her “invisible” essay made me think about why a writers’ group is so useful…It both gives you that fresh, external perspective that illuminates aspects of what’s right in front of you, and it satisfies one of the most basic reasons why we write in the first place…to have readers.

The Tale of a Girl Named Chicken

By Amanda Simays

Recently at the middle school where I work, my fellow volunteers and I started after-school clubs — Hip Hop Aerobics, Photography, Travel, and Creative Writing/Word Games. Guess which club had the least amount of sign-ups?

Yup. My club, Creative Writing. And the ones who did stick it out were much more interested in the word games (Mad Libs, Hangman, etc.) than anything that involved actually putting a pen to paper.

Maybe it’s to be expected at the middle school level, but very few of the students I work with would put “writing” and “fun” in the same sentence. I know a few kids who keep journals or write raps — and the art of passing notes and texting in class is still thriving — but for the most part, writing is viewed as schoolwork drudgery, on par with memorizing Civil War dates and calculating the slope of a line.

I’m trying to fight this attitude. A few weeks ago, I pulled four of my tutees out of class at the same time, handed them their notebooks, and told them to write the beginning of a story. They stared at me blankly.

“You can write anything,” I said. “You just have to write.”

I had my own notebook with me so I could model what I was talking about. I started writing a silly story about two boys who went fishing and caught a mermaid. Tentatively, the other girls started to write too.

“Switch!” I said suddenly, and I made everyone pass her notebook to the left. Gradually, they caught on to what I was getting at, and they also realized that I really meant it when I said that they could write about absolutely anything. When one girl complained that I didn’t give out enough candy, I told her to put that in the story if that’s what was on her mind. Sure enough, she had her character (running through the woods to escape a crazed farmer with an ax) encounter Ms. Amanda there in the forest, eating candy and not sharing with anyone.

Soon the girls turned from whining about having to write to being completely absorbed in the activity, silently scribbling except for the occasional giggle and the periodic shout of “Switch!” By the time the bell rang, we had created five collaborative stories. One girl wrote about a high school romance. Another student wrote about a seven-year-old girl named Chicken who was also “shaped like a chicken.” Were they literary masterpieces? Not really. But the point was to get the students writing, feeling free to put their thoughts into words on paper without worry of being graded or judged.

As a tutor, I have to spend most of my time focusing on the practical side of academic writing, but I’m still convinced that content organization and conventions will be easier to develop if I can foster that spark of enthusiasm for writing first.

The Latest Addition

Meet a New Writer

AMANDA SIMAYS

I hail from Glenmoore, Pennsylvania, and I’ve loved writing (stories, essays, journals, anything) for as long as I can remember. This past spring, I graduated from Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where I majored in English and Creative Writing and worked as a writing tutor. I spent a semester abroad living next to an extinct volcanic mountain in Edinburgh, Scotland and surprised myself by developing an affinity for haggis (ground-up sheep organs). During my senior year, I turned my guilty pleasure of reading melodramatic novels about creepy old manors with ominous secrets into a senior thesis about ghosts in Gothic literature.

Residual wanderlust from studying abroad and a desire to try and make the world a better place inspired me to apply to an AmeriCorps volunteer program in a part of the country where I’d never been before. That’s how I ended up working with City Year Columbia, where I spend my days doing literacy tutoring with eighth-graders, in the hopes that I can share my passion/addiction for reading and writing.

Besides reading and writing, my hobbies also include arts and crafts, baking, smoothie-making, running, board games, and exploring new places.

Amanda's first post follows.

What I Learned in College

By Amanda Simays

I knew going in that college would be a growing experience, and sure enough, by the time I left, I’d picked up a whole slew of new life skills. I learned how to whip up an impromptu batch of chocolate chip cookies without a mixer, mixing spoon, measuring cup, or a cookie tray. I’d mastered the art of shaving my legs while wearing flip-flops and standing in dorm shower the size of a welcome mat. But if I could pick the one thing I learned that changed my life the most, it would be the skills I picked up as an English major…a deeper understanding of how to read and write.

Of course I didn’t enter my freshman year illiterate, but college transformed how I thought about reading and writing. I became fascinated with the way I could pick up a seventeenth-century poem, seemingly composed of stale words frozen for centuries on the page, and then by taking notes and writing about it, the text would magically come to life before my eyes, pulsing with energy and possibility. I used to think you did the learning first and then writing second, but in my undergraduate years, I learned how you can learn while you write.

I’ve always kept journals, but in college I developed a fuller realization of why I’m so addicted to the activity. It’s not just desire to have a written record of my life as it happens, but a desire for clarity. When I’m confused about anything, when I have a big decision to make, I always write about it, and somehow the translation into black and white letters on the page makes even the stickiest problems seem more manageable.

I learned that I—and humans in general—see life through stories and make up narratives all the time. This awareness added a whole new dimension to my journal-writing habit…I realized I was turning my life into a story, not just in my head, but in a much more literal sense, translating these random thoughts and real-life occurrences into concrete stories on the page. Likewise, when I set out to deliberately make up my own stories in the form of fiction-writing, I began to notice how, on some level, I was still using writing as a vehicle to puzzle out topics I wanted to better understand. My fiction is never strictly autobiographical—it’s too much fun to explore situations I’ve never been in with characters doing things I would never do—but the stories I write often become fun house-style distortions of the issues that are on my mind at the time of writing.

I still have so much to learn about the writing process and what it means to put words on the page, but I’ve come a long way in the last four years. The act of writing brings me joy for lots of reasons, not least of which being the magical power it has to bring sense and order (or at least a more understandable chaos) to the world around me.