Writers and Artists

 I’m sitting in the car waiting for my grandson.  Moments ago, I read a post by Grant Faulkner, who in 2016 was the Executive Director at National Novel Writing Month.

“I’ve been remembering the 2016 election this week,” he wrote.

Normally, he said, November draws thousands of writers; however, after Trump’s election in 2016, writers’ stories literally collapsed.

It wasn’t just the NaNoWriMo writers. (Writers who commit to write 50,000 words for a novel in 30 days.) Many of his friends and professional writers stopped writing.

They were traumatized.

Faulkner said before that November, he didn’t believe in writer’s block, but then he saw that writing is difficult and sometimes impossible for a battered brain.

Trauma and depression can turn off the spigot of creativity.

“It’s easy to think that our art is trivial when it’s up against such a menacing and malevolent block of history as we’re living through, but the opposite is actually true: our art isn’t trivial; it’s what can deliver us.”

 Faulkner said that James Baldwin (Go Tell it on the Mountain 1953, Notes of a Native Son, 1955) expressed the importance of the role of the artist better than he could:

 “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive.”

 Howard Zinn’s quote, “An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian,” provided Faulkner with hope because we need to see that “compassion, sacrifice, courage, and kindness” are a part of every era.

I look up from behind the steering wheel and notice that the great flock of Canadian Geese I admired before settling into this page have dwindled to about 25.

The 25 are scattered about the grass, their white breasts glowing like snow patches left after the bulk of snow has been absorbed into the ground. Some are preening, and occasionally, one—male or female, I can’t tell the difference –will spread their wings in a morning wake-up stretch, revealing dark feathers beneath.

(Like some of us, some geese are slower to wake up or are simply basking in the glory of the day before getting to work.)

 Don’t let them destroy your connection to life and the joy of living. Appreciate the world we live in and the fantastic beauty surrounding us.

Break out tips for the Writer

 

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.