What Fuels You?

I am burned out.

The past month or so has easily been one of the craziest ones of my life, for both good and bad reasons. However, I finished exams on Wednesday and moved out of my dorm room yesterday, and now I feel a bit like someone stopped me mid-marathon and said, "It's ok, you can rest now." But, since I'm halfway through the marathon, I want to finish.

I'm currently unemployed open to opportunities, which means the best way for me to maintain my momentum is to write. Yet, I haven't opened my novel's document since I've been home.

The next scenes I have to write are big, messy ones, which have to drain me in order to be effective. The problem is, right now, there's nothing left to drain.

Of course, sleep will help with that, and I've convinced myself Boy Meets World marathons will as well. Then, I'll at least have the motivation to unpack, search for a job, and all those other things I need to do. But, to write? Not only to write, but to write scenes that will drain me all over again? I'll need more fuel than that to return to my novel, and to start my summer writing schedule where I'll spend more time with my novel in a day than I do in a week throughout the school year.

Above all else, I write my novel because I care about my characters, and need to tell their story. But, when I need motivation beyond that? I, shocker, turn to dance. Yesterday, though, I did more than just dance. I made a dance playlist for my novel.

And it was so much fun. I've come across dances before which remind me of my novel, as well as ones which have inspired dance scenes in my novels, but I also hunted for videos that would capture the moments I needed captured. Most of those scenes are dance scenes, and it was so cool when I found videos that looked like what I imagined. The first video, for example, just is the first scene of the novel.

I spent an embarrassing amount of time putting the dances in order, thinking about which ones best represent each moment, and how the playlist itself flows as a story arc. I cut dances which reminded me of my novel, but were fillers as opposed to scenes, just like I do when I revise. I made sure the dancers I used represented my characters in the way they danced, and in some cases, taught. Sometimes I had to ignore the fact that the dancers in the videos are, well, better dancers than my characters, but I did try to match skill level where possible.

Every time I watch the playlist, I get excited about my novel, and want to write it. Not all the dances look exactly as I imagined, of course, but the emotion behind them is always the emotion in the scenes they represent. That's all the fuel I need.

Beyond your love for your story and your characters, what fuels you write it? Is it a music playlist, pictures, videos, etc.? Let me know in the comments!

When You Feel Like a Fraud

I have been hiding out in a cave, where I have worked on essays, studied for exams, and written a polyphonic piece of nonfiction.

All of this was for school, but one of these things is clearly not like the others. The nonfiction piece was for my creative writing class, the same one which I wrote poetry for a couple months ago. I had less experience with nonfiction than I did with poetry--that is, I had none--and I'd never even heard the term polyphonic until the professor taught it to us.

As I worked on the project, I felt like a fraud. Who am I to write about my life? Who am I to put passages from other texts, including the Bible, into my story? Aren't they too good, too important for it?

Those questions led to others. What am I doing in a creative writing class when I'm clearly not experienced enough for it? How can I claim to have a voice as a writer? Who am I to edit my peers' pieces? What makes me think I can pull this metaphor off? Do I really know how to use a semi-colon? 

Who am I to call myself a writer?

That's a question I ask myself all the time as I work on novels. It's easy to feel like you're faking it as a writer and that, one day, someone will realize how little you know and call you a fraud, because you are one.

But really, we're all faking it. All we can do is use what we do know to produce our best work, and to continue learning. We'll never know everything, and that's ok.

Whenever I feel like a fraud as a writer, "Swing the Cellar Door" by Hey Rosetta! makes me feel better.

I'm sorry to reduce you to this useless imagistic bullshit, but maybe that's all I got

and

I'm sorry to confuse with some foolish thing that misses truth, but maybe that's all we are

and

I'm sorry to abuse you with this ruthlessly sadistic music, but maybe that's all I want, I'm just a really pretentious guy

Maybe all we've got--useless, foolish, pretentious, or wrong as it may seem--is exactly what we need to write some awesome stuff. Only one way to find out.

I felt like I faked my way through my nonfiction piece, but I was truthful when I wrote it, worked hard on it, and took risks with it. That was all I had, and when I passed my piece in, I knew it was enough.

See you on Wednesday, when I'll move out of my cave for four months.

Experimenting with Genre

It's been three weeks since I've updated this blog because:

• Midterm season, which included a research paper, an analytical paper, a portfolio for creative writing, rehearsals for my Shakespeare performance project, and actual midterms, tried to kick my butt. I fought it the best I could, which meant I neglected this blog, neglected revisions, and neglected sleep.
• Uh, I watch a lot of television.

Really, it boils down to busyness and laziness which, when combined, are productivity's biggest enemy.

As mentioned, one of the assignments I had was a portfolio for my creative writing class. We've had weekly writing assignments all semester, and the portfolio was a way to put all of them into a revised, polished package. After triple-checking to make sure it was correctly, frantically searching for all the peer-editing sheets I had to include as appendices in the black hole that is my backpack, and an epic battle with my stapler (that, for the record, my stapler won), I passed mine in Monday morning. And I felt good about what I passed in, which I didn't expect to because it was poetry portfolio.

Now, I adore poetry. I love to read it, and it was all I wrote in, uh, elementary school. Beyond what's been required for school, I haven't written poetry since then and, needless to say, the poem I wrote at seven in which I likened the bathroom to prison wasn't exactly a masterpiece (though it's infamous in my family.) So, I was worried that everything I wrote would be terrible, I'd fail the class, and my professor who is also an editor would tell all of her publishing friends to put me on their blacklists. Naturally. 

I have no idea if my portfolio will come back with an A or an F on it (yes, I only think in those two extremes), but, as I said, I felt good about it. That's because I experienced the same rush writing and revising some of the pieces that I do when I write and revise my novel (which is a far cry from poetry.) Admittedly, two of the poems that happened with had strong narrative elements to them (one was a prose-poem, and the other was a glosa), but they were still quite different from a YA novel due to length and other genre conventions. And, two of the poems I loved to write didn't have stories behind them at all. Ultimately, I wrote pieces I never would have written otherwise--pieces I never thought I could write--that I was happy with, and that was really, really cool (I know, I'm so poetic now.)

I took a break from novel revisions to focus on this project (and to, you know, pass my midterms), but I know that all the work I did for my portfolio will ultimately help me with my current novel and any future novels I write. The best gift this class has given me is the courage to experiment. Maybe I'll write more poetry, maybe I'll try a paranormal, maybe I'll attempt a dystopian. Maybe I'll experiment more within the contemporary genre. Maybe I'll enjoy it and maybe I won't. Maybe it'll work and maybe it won't. 

I think I'd like to find out.

What genre do you write? Have you written in other genres? If so, what was your experience like? If not, would you like to try? Let me know in the comments!

Telling Your Story Without Words

On the Playlist: United State of Pop 2009 (Blame it on the Pop) - DJ Earworm

Since I’ve had no reason to wake up before noon for about a month (out of school for the summer and looking for a job. I finally got a job the other day :)), I haven’t. This also means that it became rare for me to go to bed before three in the morning. Last night, however, I tried to go to bed at eleven because I had to be up at seven this morning to go to first-aid training. I changed my sleep schedule every day in university, so I thought I could do it again, but it’s hard to break a habit once you’ve created one. So, I needed something to help me to fall asleep.

I put on the playlist for Building Forts, which may not have been the best idea, as of course it just sent my mind intro overdrive with thoughts about the story. But, that’s pretty much how my mind is all the time anyway. Confession time, Building Forts is actually a SUPER reworked version of a fanfic I started to write (it was an AU fic, and the characters in BF are original. I just kind of reused the plot. I say kind of because a lot has changed.) So, I already had a playlist, and I never deleted the songs that fit the fic well but didn’t really fit BF.

Fix You by Coldplay was one of the songs that I always associated with the fic, and not so much BF. I mean, I knew there could be a connection, but it just wasn’t a song I heard in BF (does that make sense?) Before it came on, I’d been choreographing dances for Callie and Chase in my head, while conveniently ignoring the fact that Chase is in a wheelchair for most of the story (because that obviously helped me sleep.) Then, I choreographed to Fix You, and it was perfect. Not from a dance standpoint, because I’m certainly not a choreographer or even a trained dancer, but for the story. Callie danced like she would: absolutely no technique, and with an equal amount of heart and hesitance. Chase danced like he would: in a wheelchair, and with an equal amount of passion and frustration. And, the dance told their story. Before Fix You, all the dances I choreographed in my head told one story, either Callie’s or Chase’s. Fix You told both; it told their story.

And it was really, really cool to see their story told without words. It helped me understand it.

Of course, we’re writers, and words are how we want to tell our stories. But, I’m wondering if you ever try to tell your stories without words? Do you draw characters or scenes? Do you make book trailers? Do you compose music for your story? Let me know in the comments!