Literally just the side blog I made to put my anxiety/depression fueled thought so I could get them out of my head but then look back on later when in a healthier mindset.
Ooh, this is actually kinda a neat thing, because you can think of it as a checklist:
Who: Main character(s)
Why: Character goal or desire (stated)
Why: Character need (implied)
When: Inciting Incident
What: Means (that achieves the goal/need)
Where: Place A >> Place B
How: The Plan
Obstacle(s): antagonist or challenge
For example:
Who: Bilbo Baggins, a respectable hobbit of Hobbiton
Why: Treasure, wealth (stated)
Why: Adventure, self-respect (implied)
When: After supper
What: Quest
Where: Hobbiton >> The Lonely Mountain
How: A company of dwarves, a wizard, and an ancient map and key
Main antagonist(s): a dragon
Thus, in less than 100 words:
Bilbo Baggins is a respectable hobbit in Hobbiton, never making any trouble or having any adventures. But when a wizard and a company of dwarves invite themselves to dinner, Bilbo finds himself joining their quest from the shires of Hobbiton to the legendary Lonely Mountain, the home of a long lost treasure, and quite, possibly, a dragon.
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The Anatomy of Story by John Truby is a really good book by the by, if anyone’s interested in this sort of thing.
There'll be a moment when you realise you're 27 when yesterday you were just 17; and you wouldn't be able to tell how a decade passed away and your life got divided into before and afters. The fury of youth will subdue and nothing will really change but everything will feel different when you look at old photographs and blurry videos taken on cheap mobile phones. Scents will remind you of childhood and certain friends you don't talk to anymore, hangouts will become reunions and mom's burnt pie will become the best food you ever had. And I know on some days you won't be able to show anything of those 10 years but I hope you remember to breathe, and let go of the knot in your chest. I hope you go out in the sun and live a little, because tomorrow is 37.
Edit- I added the visualizer for this piece on my YT, check it out here
i don’t remember much of myself at twelve
or fifteen
or eighteen
or twenty-one
or twenty-five
she feels so distant from me
like we’ve lost touch in the last few years
but she’s still a friend i hope is doing well
i hope she thinks of me
and she’s thrilled to know that now we have a voice
that now we have love that isn’t leaving
that now we have fought and survived
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The more immersed I’ve become in the world of writing and the writers community, the more I’ve learnt. And that learning has been as much in terms of grammar, style and genre as it has been about the many logistics of being a writer.
I get a sense that there are a lot of misconceptions around what being a writer is like. I sure keep coming across them when I talk to non-writers and see the surprise on their faces when I talk about what my experience has been like.
In truth, I love the writer’s life, with all of its joys and infuriating moments. But I do also think that there’s a lot people don’t tend to realise about it…
It can take a long time.
When I tell people it took me three years to write No Pain, No Game, they’re often surprised. If I’m honest, I used to think that it mainly took me that long because I wasn’t very disciplined back in the day. But, as it turns out, even when I’ve been working at it diligently, my second book will likely have taken me a good couple of years by the time it’s published.
In fact, when I published No Pain, No Game, I had this grand idea that I’d release The Dhawan Brothersexactly a year later. I’m not entirely sure where that arbitrary deadline came from. I suppose I liked the symmetry of releasing a book a year on or around the same date. That timeframe, rather than invigorate me, ended up discouraging me, because I just couldn’t fit everything I needed and wanted to do with the book within a year. I’d set myself up for disappointment before I’d even started.
I see other writers release a book a year and I’m in awe of them, because that just doesn’t seem to be me. I need time and space to be able to create.
And that’s just it. Writing (for me at least, and for others too, I’m sure) simply takes time. Some pieces will take you less time than others, but ultimately, you can’t really escape it. It’ll take howsoever long it takes you to write the right story.
…and that might be longer than you or anyone else might imagine. And that’s ok.
It can feel lonely.
It doesn’t have to be, but it can feel that way at times. I imagine that a lot of writers love their craft partly because it gives them that sense of independence and all that me-time—my guess is a lot of us tend to enjoy being alone with their writing, without it necessary feeling lonely.
But, as with everything one does by themselves and that relies only on their own abilities, there are moments where it can vacillate from being contentedly alone to feeling a little lonely.
Anything can trigger it. A scene that’s not coming out quite right. A character that’s got us stuck. A plot hole that’s leaking so badly it’s making us question the whole story. It can be something that’s writing-related, something that has nothing to do with it, and anything in between.
Before I found the writing community on Instagram—before I knew that I wasn’t the only one to go through such phases—I used to try and ride those waves as best I could, mostly aiming not to drown in them.
Now, when I feel a little isolated, I pick up the phone and ping a fellow writer, and I share what’s going on. They may not have the right fix for my plot hole, but knowing they can relate to my struggle makes a whole world of difference.
It can be discouraging.
I used to get to the end of a draft and all I could see would be how much still needed to be done. In my work as a beta reader and editor,I’m always mindful that, by pointing out areas for growth and improvement in someone’s manuscript, the writer on the other end risks only hearing one thing: that they’re so much further away than they might have thought from the finish line.
What I always tell writers is what I’ve trained myself to focus on in these moments: that the work left to be done on a story should be exciting.
That the distance left to cover before a book is ready is where the story gets polished and gets a chance to shine.
That all these things we didn’t get quite right in the previous drafts are as many opportunities for us to learn and grow as writers. To improve. To fine tune our tale until it’s the best it can be.
We can look at a mountain in front of us and wonder how we’ll ever get to the other side, or we can rub our hands together and smile, because we know the view from the top will be more than worth the climb.
It can feel vulnerable.
Writing is such a personal endeavour. It’s the act of pouring your soul out on paper and channelling your inner most desires, fears and insecurities. At its core, writing is very much like therapy: you get unlimited sessions during which you give everything you’ve got on the page. It can be healing in so many ways, but the fact that it’s so vulnerable is also what makes it scary. Sharing our writing is sharing layers of ourselves that we may not often show others.
It’s no wonder letting someone else read your work can be daunting. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in saying that showing your writing to anyone feels like handing over a piece of your heart and praying no one crushes it.
The reality of it is, whatever you write, and no matter how good you are at it, there are people out there who are bound not to like it. The most cliché of all examples is that of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter: as successful as it was (and still is, over a decade later!) there are people who hate it so much they go around burning copies of it on the street. True story.
So let us be vulnerable. Let us pour our hearts out into our work and let us accept that, just like with everything in life, we won’t everyone’s cup of tea. And that’s ok. These people were never meant to be our tribe anyways.
It can be a lot about NOTwriting.
My biggest misconception about writing? The one that definitely caught me unaware? The fact that writing can actually be, well, a lot about NOT writing.
It’s one thing to write, and it’s quite another to let the world know that you have something to say. If you don’t let people know your work is out there, it’s unlikely they’ll ever find out about it.
In comes social media, marketing, networking… All these things that are not actual writing but still very much all about your writing. A large portion of my time leading the ‘writer’s life’ has been focused on building a social media presence, nurturing a network, and putting my book out there in front of the right readers.
And that, my friends, takes a lot more time, effort and energy than one might think.
It is a pain sometimes? Yes. A hundred times, yes.
Can it be avoided? Afraid not! Not if you want people to find out about you and your work (or unless you can afford the luxury of hiring someone to do it all for you—hashtag: life goals).
…Why bother, then?
And here comes the Catch 22 question. If there are so many sides to writing that are painful, vulnerable, scary and cumbersome… why even bother with this whole writing thing?
Great question! I’m glad you asked.
And I’ll tell you why:
We bother because we love it. We do it all because we can’t not do it. Because there’s no way in hell we can go too long without writing. And I’m not talking about the word count you clock in every day or every week. I’m talking about the writing you do even when you’re not physically writing—when you’re washing the dishes whilst fixing plot holes, when you’re in the shower designing your next main character or when you’re about to go to sleep and the perfect idea for a great scene occurs to you.
We take it all in our stride, the good, the bad and the ugly, because there’s no way in hell we can picture our life without it. We put up with the annoying bits, the terrifying bits, the downright eye-roll-worthy bits because writing isn’t something we merely do: it’s who we are.
I get a sense that there are a lot of misconceptions around what being a writer is like. I sure keep coming across them when I talk to non-w
I respect poetry so much because it does what I cannot do - say so much with so little.
When I have something Much to say, it takes me just as many words to say it. I say it with words that are each of them bland and common, unimaginative by their lonesome, with the hopes that if I stack so many together and squeeze a single drop of Much from each that it might flow into something meaningful.
When I have something to say, I say it twice. I say it three times. Because the first or second may not have captured the point. Because I do not trust myself to express the full essence saying it just once. Like just now, those last two sentences. I’ll repeat myself a third time for good measure - because I do not say it right just once or twice.
Poems say things in only a half, only a quarter. They choose single words worth more than ten of mine. I want to know how their minds shop for words. I want to distill myself like poets do. I want to trade in all my too many common words for the way they use an extraordinary few.
If I keep writing this, I’ll write it forever. I’ll explain myself again, as I have already, as I’m doing now. With more and different other words, with the hope of saying myself fully, like how all the hatched and messy wanton scribbles from a pen might finally color in a page. I want to change that. I want to not rip the page I’ve oversaturated by the tip of my pen.
I’ll start tomorrow, maybe, to explain myself less.
You are a long forgotten god. A small girl leaves a piece of candy at your shrine, and you awaken. Now, you must do everything to protect your High Priestess, the girl, and her entire kindergarten class, your worshipers.
The stone was immovable, in the past. Indestructible. A spire of granite no mortal hand could even alter.
But mortal hands build clever tools, and these last few hundred years I have lived in dread that they will break this, my sacred stone, the last link that preserves me, a faint shadow of a forgotten god. While my sacred stone stands, I do not, quite, fade away.
I am in a park, now, clipped and tamed, my forests long gone. But they landscape around me and my stone, admiring its beauty, so I do not complain. While they take pleasure in the stone, I am safe.
There is a playground a few lengths away, and the laughter and happy shrieking rouse me a little from my sleep. I watched over children, once. It’s nice to hear them again.
But I don’t truly awaken until the Offering is made.
Little hands touch my stone, with curiosity and a sort of reverence that only the very young feel now. For a child young enough the world is still a mystery, and even an ancient granite stone provokes wonder. So I stir, when she touches the stone, becoming hazily aware.
And then, solemnly, the child places a tiny colourful object in the roughly shaped alcove in the stone’s side, the place where offerings were laid two thousand years ago and more, and I awaken. Many people have put things in that alcove, of course… to take pictures, usually, these days, or putting a lost object where it will be seen. Merely to place an object in the alcove isn’t enough. A true offering is given as a gift, with intent.
i’m thinking tonight about masterpieces. michelangelo looked at the sixtine chapel and saw; nothing to preserve. virgil wanted his aenid burned and forgotten; only to be saved at the behest of an emperor who thought it flattery. kafka instructed his friend to burn everything he’d ever written - too personal was it, too unfinished.
they were ignored.
instead, their work was taken and held and published and thrown to be gawked at. instead, an emperor, a pope, a friend, took from within the cavities of them their choices; their art.
tumblr rolls out post+. twitter rolls out tip jars. youtube takes half of what creators earn. on social media, there is a ko-fi or a patreon and a polished face in every bio. i show my poems to my mother and she asks if I will publish them before she says anything else. emily dickinson instructed her sister to burn her poetry.
her sister did not listen.
we are a community, says tumblr, we should give back to creators. my last poem had 50 notes. six of those were reblogs that weren’t mine. i lie in bed at 2am and stare at my bright phone screen and the way netflix’s library grows thinner and thinner. the first ad on tumblr that i can reblog is for amazon. amazon takes more than half of what authors earn.
kafka’s friend took barely finished work and hammered it into structure. he is the only reason we know of him.
my father wrote a book and a play when I was barely big enough to reach his knees. when i try to talk to him about writing, he shrugs.
no one wanted to publish it, he says. so i don’t write anymore.
i am filled with poems I have never published, books I haven’t written. There are little snippets of them scattered throughout my life. I link to my ko-fi on my tumblr.
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asked capitalism of the artist: what is art, if not for consumption? who does art benefit, if it is not consumed? why create at all if you do not market it? who are you, frothing at the mouth about someone publishing someone else’s poems? who are you to hate your magnum opus? what is art, if not in relation to its reception? if no one sees it, how is it art?
