Hello, writers. On Saturday I received a wonderful quilt, made by Sara R and her sister, with wonderful supportive messages from wonderful people, including some from wonderful WO regulars and lurkers. Thank you! The messages made me cry, in a good way. It’s a beautiful quilt.
This has been a crazy week of emergency room visits and whatnot with the end result that everyone is still alive and, indeed, apparently in no more danger of unaliveness than they were before. But anyway, at such times, where would I be without my quilt and without your suggestions for Write On topics?
Here’s one of ‘em now:
I'm reading Julia Cameron's The Vein of Gold, the title referring to the place where your writing (or other artistic effort) is at its best.
She suggests looking at your obsessions, the things your writing keeps coming back to. For instance, make a list of your 5 favorite movies and 5 favorite books just off the top of your head, and then see if there are common themes or other similarities. (I realized that I read and write a lot about sibling relationships, though my characters' relations don't necessarily parallel my own family.)
One of her other exercises was to go through several supermarket tabloids and mark which stories you find interesting, then see what they have in common. Alas, the Weekly World News is no more, so the remaining ones are mostly celebrity gossip that doesn't do much for me. I did find one blurb that made my eyes pop: Ted Haggard and his wife are going to be on Celebrity Wife Swap. There's got to be a story in that!
--Tara the Anti-Social Social Worker
It’s true someone seems to have gotten a handle on the supermarket tabloids. No longer are respectable American matrons giving birth to space aliens. It is a shame. And Celebrity Wife Swap turns out not to be what it sounds like.
The above exercise reminds me of an interview I once read of Stephen Colbert in which he explained the guiding principle of his tv show: “Make it about what interests you.” (What apparently interests Mr. Colbert: Christianity, tasers, and high fructose corn syrup. All comedic gold in his hands.)
When you’re interested in what you’re doing, your chances of producing something worthwhile are much greater.
There are two things that I know have informed most of what I’ve written. One is The Hole In The Story. These are interesting tidbits which are delivered in history books as single sentences, because nothing more is known. The nothing-more-is-known hole is the natural habitat in which historical novels grow.
The other is situations where people are thrown into circumstances completely beyond their control. This has always fascinated me. When you’ve been pushed off the edge of your world, anything can happen.
So, what fascinates you? Try out the exercise Tara outlines above—the first one—and see if you can identify at least one common theme in the stories you like best. Then apply it to tonight’s challenge.
Last week we addressed the excess verbiage in the passage below, an experience that I’m sorry to say some people found traumatic. Hopefully this will be less so.
Once you’ve found out what interests you by doing the exercise above, rewrite the following passage to make it about what interests you. You can make whatever other changes you want, but keep:
Sherlock Holmes
Dr. Watson
The letter from Porlock
"I am inclined to think -- " said I.
"I should do so," Sherlock Holmes remarked impatiently.
I believe that I am one of the most long-suffering of mortals; but I'll admit that I was annoyed at the sardonic interruption.
"Really, Holmes," said I severely, "you are a little trying at times."
He was too much absorbed with his own thoughts to give any immediate answer to my remonstrance. He leaned upon his hand, with his untasted breakfast before him, and he stared at the slip of paper which he had just drawn from its envelope. Then he took the envelope itself, held it up to the light, and very carefully studied both the exterior and the flap.
"It is Porlock's writing," said he thoughtfully. "I can hardly doubt that it is Porlock's writing, though I have seen it only twice before. The Greek e with the peculiar top flourish is distinctive. But if it is Porlock, then it must be something of the very first importance.”
He was speaking to himself rather than to me; but my vexation disappeared in the interest which the words awakened.
"Who then is Porlock?" I asked.
"Porlock, Watson, is a nom-de-plume, a mere identification mark; but behind it lies a shifty and evasive personality. In a former letter he frankly informed me that the name was not his own, and defied me ever to trace him among the teeming millions of this great city. Porlock is important, not for himself, but for the great man with whom he is in touch. Picture to yourself the pilot fish with the shark, the jackal with the lion – anything that is insignificant in companionship with what is formidable: not only formidable, Watson, but sinister -- in the highest degree sinister. That is where he comes within my purview. You have heard me speak of Professor Moriarty?"
"The famous scientific criminal, as famous among crooks as --"
"My blushes, Watson!" Holmes murmured in a deprecating voice.
"I was about to say, as he is unknown to the public.”
--opening of The Valley of Fear by Arthur Conan Doyle
Btw, you don't have to tell us what theme you chose, but it might help if you do.
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