Pixar's story rules... with Legos! And where is Week Seven?

As follow-up to yesterday's post, and because really what isn't better with Legos, behold:

Pixar's story rules as illustrated by Legos, courtesy of ICanLegoThat.

In the "Where the $%*# is Week 7's challenge?!" department, I wanted to let the rough draft cool off for a week before revising and posting. It needs just a little more love, but I'm unsure if it's unconditional or tough love it needs. In On Writing, Stephen King recommends tossing the rough manuscript in a drawer for at least a month, but it's a short manuscript, and a month is a long time in blogland. So a week it is.

Happy Friday!

Freewriting: An endorsement

I've always been a hungry consumer of advice about how to write but a reluctant practicioner of the same. Reading other writers' accounts of how they write was like writing except much, much easier. Those books are like candy to me: sweet, easy, and kind of addictive. (Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird and Stephen King's On Writing remain my favorites, but I recently read a Kindle Single by Ann Patchett called The Getaway Car that was very good as well—I must have highlighed 60% of it.)

Anyway, most writers recommend freewriting as a way to get into your story, but until Week Five's challenge I had never done it. The thought of writing without a plan as to what I'm writing is terrifying for some reason, even though everyone and their third cousin agrees that it's so very productive.

Well, I thought Week Five turned out really well, so I finally strong-armed myself into trying this again for Week Six:

A journey into the psyche...

Could be a few things. Literal journey: kids' book or YA novel?

Or an exploratory essay/story about some aspect of the mind as it impacts one's life over the years: fear of the basement.

Could combine the two: child is terrified of basement, confronts colorful fears, finally embraces imagination. 

Translation: For Week Six I had been considering two different approaches—an actual journey where the threats/rewards of the tangled psyche are literal (at least to the character), or a more real life exploration of how a certain fear/predjudice carries forward through the years.

And then I realized, not ten minutes into this exercise, that these ideas could be one: a children's book where the character must, metaphorically and literally, confront his or her fear of the basement. 

(Though it is interesting that my "freewriting" is still, basically, planning. It takes time to unclench, okay?)

So this is the plan. I hope to have it finished by Sunday if not sooner!

Reflections on Week One

[Read the finished play here!]

That was the first work of creative fiction I've started and finished since December 2009 (a little over two years).

Leaving myself to my own devices clearly wasn't working. I think I needed a create a public challenge like this for myself so that I would feel accountable and make writing a priority. 

I've read Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird probably 5-6 times, and though I've believed with all my heart that the only way to get the work done is to give yourself permission to (in her words) "write shitty first drafts," I have actually never allowed myself to do that. Stephen King (in his memoir/how-to book On Writing) also recommends writing to see where the story goes. He doesn't outline first -- he just writes and writes. I like to think of myself as a fairly easygoing guy, but the thought of writing without any thought as to what I'm writing makes my left eyelid twitch uncontrollably. 

(Whatever my writerly output these past years, the discerning reader will have no doubt noticed that I've spent lots and lots of time at least reading about the act of writing...)

In any case, probably because I assigned myself a lot of work and a near-impossible amount of time in which to do it, for Week One's challenge I was able to suppress the inner critic and just write to see what would happen next. I didn't really intend to write a play, but that's what came out. And by the way, whenever I read that an author was completely surprised by the form their story took, I would always cry bullshit. I mean, really. You had no control? Who's driving here? But I am here to tell you that it's real. It could even happen to you.

Lastly, how the play was written is also significant. I mentioned in an earlier post that I was starting to write it longhand in a small notebook during my commute to my second job. Saturday afternoon I carved out for myself a few hours to finish the story, which involved first transcribing everything I had written longhand into a blank Word document. This sounds rote and uncreative, but I found myself tweaking small things as I typed them out. I think it woke up the creative brain enough that, once everything I'd already written was in place, I had no trouble continuing where I had left off. 

What writer has not experienced the terror of the blank Word document? Here, my friends, is a possible cure: start your story longhand, give yourself small assignments in short amounts of time, and don't take it to your computer until you've built up some steam.

And then immediately start your next story.