Try writing prose fiction barefoot
So if you are trying to write prose fiction and you are having problems, be it from lack of practice, newness, or having let your skill set lapse from decades of disuse; regardless of why you are having the problem, I have a simple piece of advice for you. Take off your shoes.
And your socks.
You need to be barefoot.
Now, try wring your prose fiction barefoot.
It works wonders.
See?
Okay
good. I have now dispensed a single – but vital – piece of hard earned
wisdom. That means I can prattle at you
about whatever for the rest of this essay. Haha!
Oh don’t look at me, I’m
in this weird middle place where I am super auto minimalism, telling the very
least amount to get the story across.
It’s another of my weak areas and I’m trying to build that up. About two years ago I looked at poetry and
free verse, the “thing I’m worst at” and now I’m more published as a poet or
lyricsist than I am as anything else.
Writing is like any art,
like falling in love, like raising kids – it’s make-it-up-as-you-go land and
the advice of other people will only ever very seldom be actually useful. Most
of the time it’s a distraction or a contrivance, or worse.
But the cultivation of
wisdom is good. Though only time and
experience will tell you what works.
Bruce Lee said Use only that which works, and take it from any
place you can find it.
This holds true in
writing, in photography, in life, in … everything. It is one of those very few things (for me)
that someone else said that I find unequivocally absolutely true.
Did you have to work for
it? Then it’s wisdom. If you can look it
up its intelligence. Old fashioned
western democracy’s definition of intelligence anyway, which does leave things
out (emotional intelligence or empathy is far more important to human survival
than the ability to put things in space, and I say this as someone who has been
nuts about space as far back as she can remember).
For me it’s not a matter
of figuring out what I want or need to say. It’s realizeing that I *need* to
communicate a thing at all, then working out if / how to do it. That takes training. My brain is resistant to such indoctrination.
It wishes to be free at all times. Your
body is really the only thing that can truly be said to be your possession
however. A body is the sole property
and provenance of the soul which inhabits it.
So I do what I have to to make my brain cooperate. There is no shame in doing what is needed to
make the rain come, no matter how silly, how stupid, or how embarrassing. If it
helps the words come, DO THAT THING.
If anyone give you grief
over it, ditch them, cut them out of your life, or dial them back to a dull
roar but realize they know nothing, at least nothing about what you need.
Most of us once we get
going don’t need and simply will not take direction. When I’m going on
something, be it a piece of verse, a book, an essay, or a short story, the only
enemy I have is distractions and interruptions.
Once I’m there I’m good. I may
not eat or take very good care of scheduled things so I have taken steps to
accommodate for that.
The hidden challenge then
is knowing when to stop. I’m still working on that. Sometimes it’s obvious and clear when a work
is done. Other times…less so. I try for the least editorial ship on
anything I’ve written in the white blaze of creativity, where only the divine
may get my attention and that channel is occupied by one or more musae; but
when I do edit, I am savage. Find what
I’m trying to say and make it better. Clearer.
More …it,-er. Flesh the purest
form of the thing inside it out and then clear away the dead wood.
HARDER THAN IT SOUNDS Sometimes…
Look I’ve gotten mired for
literal years on one project just on this step. Respect it
Now, find
just one of the small number of places that are interested in what you have to
sell them.
Good
luck.
In the meantime, Is anyone
looking for adult flash fiction? Asking
for a friend who looks exactly like me.
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