writing advice and love

 This one is just for me. Nobody else needs to make use of this but me. This is my place of mistakes, my place of regret, my place of machinery. This is my place to be real, to no longer be fictionalised into regression but be authentic, sincere and true. You are grounded. You are real.

This is going to nail down a few writing ideas that are crucial to me presently. These were found, gifted or interpreted from all over the place, but resonate here in a place only mine. I hope this helps to clear my head of noise and space, so that I can focus on the words, the work, and the inescapable setting of hailey brain broke.

Your origins are your own

They do not belong to anybody else — this is originality. This comes from Dorothea Brande,

 ‘If you can discover what you are like, if you can discover what you truly believe about most of the major matters of life, you will be able to write a story which is honest and original and unique’. 

You are going to grow beyond this supposition of discovery. Still, there is nothing more new than your learned experiences alongside the works you’ve consumed in the order you’ve taken them. Everything you have in writing is already within you. You are a pool of childhood, adolescence and adulthood life. Belonging to this brain comes to nobody else. Your strength sleeps in originality, but it is also your downfall in semantics. Keep growing. 

Who leads the charge?

The stories we tell are bodies. Of text, of blood, of matter itself, stories are composite. Break a story apart and you find in them characterisation, description, imagery, et cetera. These are bones, arteries, organs to the body. Essential, though for stories, some are needed more than others.
There are two tools you, Hailey, hold at the forefront of your work. These are theme and language. Theme is the guiding star of your work. Language is the mode of expression. Everything else, as it exists so nebulously, will and must work to serve this star. Edgar Allan Poe said something about it, something about a machine that you can’t remember.
Let your bones worship the body they exist within. Let characterisation, description and imagery feed the star they worship. Don’t let your language be useless. How do we make choices that revolve around and work further towards theme? Let the body work holistically with the life bound to it.

Overwriting

Reduces clarity. See above for an example. Avoid. 

I thought theme was for sixth form English essays

Where does theme come from? In the bodily metaphor, theme is life itself. It emerges once the body is drafted, reviewed and considered, ‘what is this piece about?’
Annoyingly, theme can mean anything. Boil it down, review your writing as others would see it. Peer review yourself, and conceive of the core notion of the piece. What is the experience it details?

Run from copular verbs

Copular verbs are inaction. A story is most engaging when a character is acting, and behaving, when they are taking action towards their desire. Copular verbs work against that, instead implying the character is acting far beyond they actually are. 

Inaction is sitting, inaction is waiting. Your character has to move, and do something to further the story, narrative and plot. These verbs are dangerous and a pitfall for cerebral writing. One character needs to win, the other character needs to lose. 

Desire so dear

Desire is difficult to define, but crucial to narrative design. We return to seeking what we want, although we word it differently. We very rarely speak about what we actually, actively want. But, we must be careful.
Desires must not be profound and nebulous. They are quite often uninformed and immediate. I may go to the shops to buy some cheap fairy lights or my room. So, my character wants fairy lights, so they want a better room, a more comfortable place, to live somewhere else completely, but are stuck where they are now. They are trying to change their situation. 

Desire too does not need to be material. Desire drives character in strange ways.
Too, there is a wordlessness to desire. We very rarely say what it is that we want. Children do, with no other means of ability of understanding. Use language to express it. Nonetheless, it’s still a profound and difficult concept, albeit crucial to character.
It is also important to consider that a character does not need to get their desire. The want still remains in the face of failure, unworded and distracted. One winner, one loser. Internal or external, the cycle loops.
Keep trying. Understanding this one is crucial. 

Outlines can work. They can also confuse

Keep these for essays, lord forbid you have to write another one. Again, clarity is something that makes you suffer, but something you need much more of.

Visuals work too

When the literary hands atrophy, you often move to the visual side. This becomes pertinent whenever you’re exhausted. But get, and stay interesting with it. It requires practice and patience. Don’t rely on them, but again, let them feed the body, feed the theme. 

Patience and practise, patience and practise.   

The cycle of social media

Social media fucking draaaains you. Oh my goodness it ruins your brain. It saps you of energy, effort towards what you’re working on and leaves you tired and disgusted. It steals away your creativity, and makes you more tired than you already are.
Take breaks. Breaks as in, sitting in the kitchen floor or in the sunlight and let something wash over you. Not brainless walks with headphones on. Just quietness. Listen to your breathing. It’s okay to nap — even better if you got more sleep. Let yourself be filled with quiet. Just let yourself be comforted. 

Everything comes at their own time, and will requires a soulful patience. If the words are dry, nap. Leave them be. Just don’t burn yourself out in the hellsite, as you’ve been doing for months now.

Remember the season

You don’t like it but Wild Words has some points. The terfy book gives guidance in where to exist as a writer, where you and your stories sit and how you understand them. 

You, Lee, feel things in big, heavy ways, and often you undermine their impact with you. Let the seasons come, and let them go. Right now, as you’re writing this, you are in a season of exhaustion. You’re overworked, under
paid and stressed. You cannot produce the best work you can in a pandemic. You want to be in other places — and they will come — but not, nor ever immediately.
Too, these personal seasons are nonlinear, and are a great source of creativity. You don’t have to know anything right now. 

I’ll add to these if I remember anything else, or something new comes. Much love to those being patient with my mental illnesses, much understanding to those who aren’t. Show this patience. Be sincere. Be real. Be grounded.