Category: Creative Writing

A World of Pure Imagination

ChrisLeave a comment

A couple of weeks ago I was given some clothes from a friend who is moving. Among them I found some pieces for a costume that I can wear to our local Renaissance Faire, which got me thinking about what additional pieces I would need to buy to complete the outfit.

I found myself looking at hats, and while I was looking at “what is period-appropriate” I realized that I was letting “authenticity” get in the way of just getting something that I liked and would enjoy. I’m not going to work at the Faire, I’m not in the SCA, I’m not trying to do a period recreation, so why am I stressing out over “oh, wait, that’s medieval, not Renaissance, so I shouldn’t get that”?

It’s ridiculous. The goal is to have fun. To enjoy myself. To have a costume that I like wearing. I shouldn’t care if someone at Faire is going to look at it askance and think “Pfft! What a loser, wearing that!” I’m not wearing it for them. I’m wearing it for me.

Once I had that thought, I realized just how many other ways that mindset has been a limiting factor on my creativity. I love the idea of creating a fantasy character for Faire that has antlers, like the palmate antlers that moose have. But the little “reality” voice in my head has been going, Female moose don’t have antlers, so you can’t have moose antlers. But you could be a caribou. Except then you can’t name your character Bramble because there aren’t any brambles in the caribou’s native habitat…

The more I listened to that little voice, the more I got discouraged about the idea of making a fantasy costume, and I didn’t even realize how ridiculous I was being. I was letting the idea of “being accurate” take away the fun of “being imaginative”. Why? If I’m creating an original character, why can’t I make it according to my own rules?

Guess where else that little voice pops up? Writing. Limiting my settings or characters or scenarios because “that’s not how it was in the Old West” or “that’s not how werewolves act” or “that’s not how it works in real life”, instead of just letting my imagination run amok and enjoying the process of creating. I need to give myself permission to live in a world of Pure Imagination for a while, and just write. Especially if I embrace the mindset of writing for me, not for an audience.

I need to go back and watch the “Octopus” episode of Bluey and remind myself that it’s okay to say “Yes, this octopus does that.”

It will make things more fun.

Through the years

Chris

Over the past month or so I’ve gone through boxes of notebooks that I have had stored in my garage for decades. I pared them down to the stories and writings I wanted to keep, then organized them into three-ring notebooks so I could find them easily. They date back to 1984, and reading the stuff from when I was 13 is equal parts embarrassing, hilarious, and nostalgic. When I read a story about “the Simon house” on “Parker Hill”, it reminds me of watching “Simon & Simon” and reading “The Haunting of Hill House” by Shirley Jackson. I had even created a pseudonym for my writing: Hg Morgan. Because Morgan horses were beautiful, and we were working with mercury in science and it was pretty cool stuff. However I have no idea why so many of my stories were set in Billings, Montana.

Sometimes it was fun being 13. It was a lot less complicated, anyway.

I am trying to re-read my old stories without cringing, to try to jump back into the flow and enjoy the process again. I have a lot to go through, and I’m hoping it will “spark joy” to borrow a phrase from Marie Kondo.

I already know the first story – the one about the Simon house on Parker Hill – will only be a partial success, because at the end of the notebook there’s a note that says “To finish the story, go on to the next volume”… which I don’t have. Oops!

Just Write.

Chris

Obviously I haven’t been as consistent with my blogging here as I could have been. There are lots of reasons excuses, none of which are really good. Fear is the largest one, fear that what I write isn’t good enough, isn’t interesting enough, isn’t important enough. Isn’t “enough” enough.

Today I came to the realization that it doesn’t matter. If I want to write, then I should write. And if I want to get better at writing and tap back into the creative flow that I used to have, I need to write. Just write.

It has been a weird past few months, culminating in an almost existential crisis this past week where I seriously wondered what I was doing with my life and what my purpose was. So many of my family and friends have jobs where they directly help people – educators, medical professionals, counselors, therapists – and I feel like my job doesn’t matter. Sometimes I don’t think it even matters to my company, because so many of the things I’ve worked on over the past few years have been canceled before they were complete. It has made me feel a bit lost and wondering if I should find a new job where I have more impact. I don’t need to change the world, but it would be nice to feel a personal satisfaction with my work. Except the jobs that I am drawn to are not ones I could really make a living doing… at least not comfortably. My current job may not be where my heart is, but it is financially secure.

It’s really easy to say “money isn’t everything” or “money shouldn’t be the main concern” except I have seen what happens on the other end of that mindset and I am not willing to risk that. I am my own (and my only) safety net. Cutting it because I’m feeling bored or unfulfilled at my current job is not a good long-term plan.

Maybe it’s not a question of finding a job that fulfills me and provides satisfaction, but maybe a hobby. In many ways, writing used to be that hobby. Twenty years ago I would bring a spiral notebook with me to work and write in the cafeteria during lunch and on break. I still remember the feeling of surprise and revelation while writing a scene from “Renegade” and discovering Joshua knew that Vin was innocent. Joshua saying “Shame, too, them hanging an innocent man and all” came out of nowhere, and it surprised me as much as it surprised Vin. It was one of the times I remember feeling so drawn into a story that it just flowed.

Unfortunately around that time is also when I began over-thinking my writing because I realized people were actually reading it, and I discovered that the cast members from The Magnificent Seven were aware of my website where the story was posted. The thought of Rick Worthy reading my interpretation of Nathan still has the power to make me cringe. I started worrying about “what the audience would think of it” and self-edited to the point that I lost the feeling of flow. Writing became more a source of anxiety than an escape, and eventually I stopped.

I still have stories in my head, plots in my notes, stories I’ve thought of over the years that I would love to get on paper, but have let the anxiety of “what the audience would think of it” keep me from putting them down. If I can let go of that anxiety and find the flow again, maybe that world-building and writing will offer the satisfaction that I’m not finding in my job right now.

The only way to find out is to just write.

Identifying An Audience

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Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

– Cyril Connolly

I haven’t posted anything in a while because of crippling self-doubt issues. They’re not new – I’ve had them for about 20 years, when I suddenly started realizing that people were reading what I wrote and I was afraid that they wouldn’t like it.

I used to do creative writing. I used to write fan fiction. I’ve had stories rambling around my head for as long as I can remember, but around 2000 I stopped putting them on paper (or on the computer), because suddenly I cared about what other people thought of them.

This week I was binge-watching Criminal Minds on Netflix and one of the bookend quotes by Cyril Connolly really hit home. I had stopped doing something I liked because of others. I started focusing so much on what they would enjoy that I stopped focusing on what I enjoyed.

The Connolly quote made me realize that if I wrote for myself, I would always have an audience. And if I enjoyed doing it, if I enjoyed taking the worlds in my head and committing them to paper/screen, then I could revisit them whenever I wanted. Like I used to do. And if other people enjoyed them along the way, then that was just gravy on the biscuit.

So this WordPress may end up having various pages popping up here and there as I revisit the worlds in my head and pull the stories out. My challenge to myself is to write them for me, without second-guessing myself about what anyone else thinks of them.

They won’t be perfect… but I’ll bet they’ll be beautiful.