I’ve recently been helping a few people who have asked for help in the craft of writing.
For some reason, these people think I have something to say, or pass on when it comes to this endeavor. I am not a professional writer. I have never been paid for a word that I have scribed.
When I’ve been asked in the past to help, it’s been as a tutor to students, or as an actual teacher of Language Arts. I did not do this job for long. Because my son became paraplegic. I could not care for him and 135 students and do either my son or the students the justice required of each.
So I gave up teaching high school students. I did not give up teaching. My primary student was my son. This was tricky, as the father/son relationship is fraught with enough peril without adding the job as supplemental educator to the list. Add to this the difficulties of a body that betrays and, well, you see the task that was put before me.
But anyone who is a parent knows that you are not the supplemental educator. You are the primary one. Fortunately, my son inherited my need to people please. This makes for an eager student.
Unfortunately for me, my son is mathematically gifted. I am not. It is the one subject I have always struggled with. No matter. When one is not adequate to a task one finds those who are. My son took the AP calculus test when he was a Junior in high school and got the highest grade possible.
The little bastard can also write.
There is no justice in this world. I kid. I kid my kid.
And we kid each other, mercilessly. I am a smart ass of the highest caliber. My son tries to top me. We try to top one another. No one makes a cripple joke like my son. No one.
He said he was thinking about becoming a male stripper. I told him his stage name must be “Rolling Thunder.” He liked that. We are not a family that takes itself seriously.
My son is bisexual and is beginning the transition to becoming a female. At 31. He has been on hormone therapy for months now. I am proud that he, and he has told me it is still he for now, is discovering all who he is. It’s a process.
Like writing. Everyone has their own way of going about it and no one way is the right way. Except if you are using your efforts to tear things down out of malice, anger, hate, envy, revenge, any of the negative emotions that keep us apart. This is not the right way. It has power, oh yes, but evil almost always does, that is often what attracts its victims. These emotions have their place and to not feel them when they occur is a grave mistake.
Acting on those emotions however….
Writing helps in the expiation of many of these emotions if they are used to make art. Art is nothing less than the manifestation of an inner vision that evokes an emotional, intellectual, or spiritual response. The masters draw forth all three.
I am not a master. Not even close. I am a neophyte. And I have been writing since I was 4 or 5. The reason why I am not a master is because I never tried as hard as I could. Always held back, even if just a little.
This is a mistake. Why? Why hold back anything at all?
Because words are magic. Language is magic. And any magic that is worth a damn can hurt as well as heal. And without intention.
So, process. I can sit here and say, first do no harm, but you only get a tepid art if you do not risk some sort of harm. The only acceptable harm for me is that I do to myself. I am the only one I have permission to harm. That doesn’t mean I haven’t unintentionally harmed people with my words. Or intentionally for that matter. I do my best not to do so intentionally.
My subconscious sometimes has other ideas.
My process. I was taught to write extemporaneously. In college, we would walk in for midterms or the final, often these were the only two tests in my English classes; there would be 3 questions written on the blackboard. Answer two. You have 2 and a half hours. Go.
So the trick is to write with a combination of a loose plan in mind but with intuition. I still write this way. I don’t plan, to a great degree, what is going to come out. This post is an excellent example of that.
I recently posted “In the style of – an exercise in mimesis.” Let me tell you how I went about it. I have a copy of Harlan Ellison’s “The Essential Ellison.” I opened that book at random. I looked down. The first paragraph I saw was the paragraph I used. I did the same thing with “The Book of Disquiet.” Random. My writing responses in the style of were written intuitively, minimally edited, and then posted.
Because that’s how I’ve been writing lately. The words flow, the subjects speak, I am just the fool at the other end typing it all down. It is my responsibility to decide whether or not to hit send, or go ahead and delete it. No one else’s.
I dislike writing in code. Misunderstandings are inevitable. Feelings get hurt. Just because people won’t have an honest conversation. I am a private man who guards his time and privacy with all the zealotry of a junk yard dog. I only intrude on another’s time and space if I am compelled, or invited – and I am not a man that likes to be forced into anything.
So what is your process? I don’t know. Can’t know. Only you can answer that question. I am still answering mine. I am still developing my voice.
It’s a process.
