Break Out #1
Most everyone writes like most everyone walks. But we don't all strut like Carole Channing in Thoroughly Modern Millie (Movie 1967).
Don't you sometimes want to break free and feel that free abandon with work and with life?
They say that every kid's an artist. But we're adults, and we have built up some self-consciousness. Or maybe we're in the gap between where we are and where we want to be.
We have good taste. We can tell when a story doesn't ring true. We think we have a good idea, but we ask ourselves, why do I sound like a freshman when I want to have graduated with a Ph.D.?
It’s the skill we need before applying what’s in our hearts.
Skills can be learned.
But before we study grammar, story structure, plot, The Journey of the Hero, or the mechanics of the Screenplay, we must still the voice that screams in our ears that we can't have the thing we want.
We hesitate to play full-out in most endeavors. Heavens, we want to dance while we're scrubbing the floor, but we scowl instead. A slight change of attitude, and our time would have been joyful instead of burning sunshine.
(I used to work in an office with a receptionist, who, when totally frustrated would clean the office. It worked for all of us.)
We hear about doing what we love and getting paid to do it, and we try. We hear that life is supposed to be fun but don't feel we have much of it.
It's break-out time.
It might not happen all at once. It might come in spurts, but it will come. We are writers. We have declared ourselves to be, and so we are.
Now we want to be good writers.
That's called learning our craft.
Once, at a writer's workshop, an author/presenter asked: "Who wants to be a writer?"
Everyone in the room raised their hands.
"Then what in the hell are you doing here?' he boomed. "Go home and write."
Yep, keep at it until…, although I believe some input now and then is a good idea. Sometimes we will hear the one thing that will push us over the edge. (Into freedom, not insanity.)
This sounds as though I'm going for a motivational talk or branch into psychological jargon.
I am.
But this site pertains to writing.
I feel that writing will take you where you want to go. (Read about "Morning Pages in Julia Cameron's book, The Artist's Way, or hang in here with me, and I will put my spin on it with the next post.)
Maybe you'll write that book. Maybe you won't. Perhaps you will get published. Maybe you won't. But if you put your butt on the chair every day with the intention of something happening. It will.
Stick with it. You can have a darn good time, and isn't that want we want out of life anyway?
Yes, but I want money.
Well, that too.
