The writing process 3

There was a time when I didn't exist. And then, as far as my limited capacity for understanding things allows, I was born. For a long time especially before the age of 5, I did a lot of different things - none of them creative writing. I know it is hard to believe but I used to not write. At least not for fun or money or for purposes of espionage. Then one day, I dropped everything and started to write. Everything shattered to the ground, but I was so engrossed with my initial idea, that I didn't even stop to clean it up. And here we are today.

Once I started writing on a regular basis I was overwhelmed with a feeling that I would run out of ideas and that I would started repeating myself. Well, it seems that I was wrong. Ideas just come to me (I have purchased a few of them from time to time and have participated in an idea exchange program where a few of my ideas change places with a few ideas from another writer and enjoy hanging out in their writing for a while. I loved having these visiting ideas and I showed them the town and took them out to some of the finest restaurants, but I still think they seemed a bit homesick and while I was sad to see them go, I loved having my ideas back. They seemed a little older, a little wiser and a bit less strange in comparison to the ones who stayed with me. We had quite a celebration, me and my once-again reunited ideas, which mostly involved sparkling apple juice and a game of twister.) Yes, the concern that my mind would not be able to generate any new ideas was based on my faulty thinking that my mind was like an hourglass (not sure about the shape - I mean I'd be okay with that and that could explain why I feel something similar to sand moving around inside my brain when I do lots of cartwheels in succession) that had somehow been cracked and was leaking at a rapid rate and that once empty would be patched up with some super-adhesive glue so no sand could be put back in.

I thought that once an idea left my head, either due to my writing it down or on it's own volition (I don't actually think ideas or thoughts think themselves, although I am a big fan of cutting out the middleman and if I am a middleman in this arrangement then I would want someone else to cut me out. I just haven't the heart to do it to myself as I know it will involve a super-long, really-challenging conversation that will undoubtedly end in making myself cry which will make me reconsider cutting myself out only knowing that when I go back to the big boss who only cares about the bottom line that I may be at risk of losing my job which will end in my own tears, so either way I lose. Seems to be a theme these days.) If once used, thoughts were gone forever, then they would become like a valuable commodity worth holding on to and sort of leaving in an incubation phase where they were sort of thought-out but not quite - as a way of holding on to them and putting off the goodbyes and having to rent out their room and put their stuff in the attic. I have found, much to my delight and glee, that ideas don't run out, that my mind is not like an hourglass (although that makes me even more confused about the internal sand-in-my-head thing that I may or may not be imagining and I will let you know when I reach a decision - only 25 more flips of the coin to go!) and I am not just a middleman. I mean I may be a middleman, not just a middleman and this is now the most times I have ever written or said or thought the word middleman in my life and it is either the start of a big "writing the word middleman" phase I'm going through or the end of a short one. It is exactly as much fun as it sounds and I am sitting in silence right now in case you were wondering. It isn't always silent, what with the beeps and the honks and the roaming cavalry but it is right now as the sun is shining and everyone else is outside flying kites or walking dogs or attempting to see what happens if you attach a large kite to a small dog on a particularly windy day.

So, how do I think up new ideas? Do you really want to know? Do I want to share my secret or do I want to take it to my grave like an old Italian woman with her prized spaghetti and meat sauce recipe (shhh - the secret ingredient is nutmeg, lots and lots of nutmeg, almost to the point where it is inedible and her family has just been way too polite for years now while also building up a huge tolerance for overly nutmegged foods). I have very little in common with old Italian grandmothers and even if I was interested in doing something about this I'm not sure how I'd start bridging the gap aside from going undercover and living among those wise, bastions of culture. I'd immerse myself in their lives and come out of this experience all the richer and the wiser and the more female and Italian and I'd probably wonder, while feeling proud, if I had just wasted three years of my life.

New ideas just come to me. These seemingly random thoughts just pop into my head and I find some way, not always logical, to connect them. Having said that, one of my favourite things in writing is to take a wide variety of odd thoughts and make them sing together. I have a long history of trying to make things sing together - I've worked with a band of neighbourhood stray cats that just couldn't hold a tune or deal with constructive criticism without hissing and scratching. I also tried helping a group of enthusiastic grade 5s once when their music teacher was sick with scurvy (which I thought was odd and most likely an excuse to wallpaper her room as I seem to be stuck on people wallpapering their rooms even though almost no one does that any longer, which could be part of my problem - I miss the wallpapering days of yore) and while they definitely performed with the requisite attitude and defiance I was aiming for they just couldn't differentiate between a high C and a B flat for which I was constantly at wits end. Finally, while in a state of delirium and feeling alternatingly blisteringly hot and icy cold from a high fever and hopped up on meds, I tried to teach a variety of body parts to sing broadway show numbers and we were incredible with the only downside being that my family spent the rest of the week on the phone with a variety of specialists trying to rule out anything too serious. But words, they are fun to put together to make sentences. I love sentences- just not ones involving poisonous snakes...not that I have any firsthand knowledge - I refuse to rank my hands as a general rule.

People may be thinking "don't be so self-absorbed" and I want to say that I'm not so self-absorbed, only partially self-absorbed and mostly in an endearing fashion like a baby or a robot. On a side note, I would love to be self-absorbing - think of how easy it would be to clean up spills in the kitchen! One piece of advice I was given before creating my blog was to avoid coming across as condescending - which can happen very easily if I am not careful. I have tried to a certain extent, but sometimes the feelings of patronizing superiority just rise up from within me and it comes out in the writing. I'm not sure exactly what that means, but I don't want to spend too much time analyzing the writing which would lead naturally to analyzing myself which would lead to lots of self-reflective writing and then analyzing that and where would that get me? I may as well just write and not reflect at all and be happily oblivious sort of like deer or not write and just spend more time with the family - they are all growing up so fast and furry. I have always had a great respect for deer and their non-reflective ways - although, if they were slightly more reflective they may live longer.

I'm actually being facetious about not reflecting and analyzing as I sort of allowed myself to go completely off track (I need to look into fixing the tracks, glueing myself to them and then calling it a day. I love that! I think I can call when the day is over when really I have no say at all and neither do you. Just try it - call it a day and see what really happens. That's right. We are so small and insignificant in the realm of day-calling. Nights too probably. Who do I think I am  - a day caller?) - what I meant to say was that I don't ever want to sound condescending and instead would be more than happy to be able to condensing things - like my own milk or my collection of old socks or compress things rendering my need for a hot compress moot. Sometimes I feel like my whole purpose in life is to render things moot and other times I start to question if I truly understand what purpose means and other times I just feel like smiling at myself in the mirror until my cheeks are sore and need to be rubbed. I love to rub my own cheeks. In fact, I could go for some of that right now and I would if I didn't already have some potatoes to peel for purposes I've yet to determine. And if I want to be self-absorbed, who are "they" to say that I can't? Why are "they" always trying to limit how I spend my time? If I want to spend every moment of my free time being sky-high absorbed with myself then that is something I must do, because as I have learned the hard way , I just gotta be me, mostly because everyone else is already taken.

One big challenge I face everytime I write an intentionally funny piece is trying to be actually fun and not to come across as trying too hard to sound funny. I use the word intentionally because sometimes I write something slightly more dramatic in tone that may also come across as hilarious to some (similar but not the same as having people laugh at you when you trip and fall - I once tried incorporating a real trip and fall while I was writing and nearly broke the computer as well as giving myself quite the gash in my head- thankfully we were both okay). I know when I read other people's work that seems too forced and not really that funny I feel pain and I cringe like when you witness someone twisting their ankle. It is just so hard to stand by and do and say nothing when a comedic piece falls flat, so I usually take the cowardly way out and just sneak out the back door trying to leave unnoticed. I know how that sounds, but I have to say that I have nearly perfected taking the cowardly way out of situations to the extent where I believe that is a thing of beauty in and of itself - I may actually put together a one-man show featuring me being super-cowardly with the intent being that it is non-cringe worthy and really funny so that the audience doesn't try to take the cowardly way out and leave out the back door during the show (just so you know, what gives the appearance of a back door is really just a painted door that is part of my set - just letting you all know to avoid any accidents.)

So I always have a voice in the back of my head checking and double checking to guard against me crossing from the ranging from the stop-me in-my-tracks-funny-to-at-least-somewhat-funny zone to the should-be-avoided-at-all-costs-so-unfunny-the-reader-is-actually-tossing-a-coin-between-figuratively-and-literally-pulling-their-hair-out zone. I believe that I spend most of my time in the former, but I have also found myself in the barren wastelands of the latter where the only restaurant in town is a Greek place that specializes in Chinese food, the one good clothing store is constantly all out of overalls and the local school decided to save money by only offering odd-numbered grades for the students and those kids unlucky enough to be in an even grade have to sit cross-legged in the gym for hours at a time resulting in feet that are constantly asleep. Every second of time I've spent in that horribly unfunny place has been devising a plan for how to escape which usually involves paying a highly-inflated price for a train ticket only to find out that the train is broken down and I have to walk. In reality, when things are hard or tough to write I either take a long break or persevere and force myself to get funnier  RIGHT NOW! as I have a low tolerance for my own failure in this area and I know fully well what I will do to myself if I don't figure it out and give myself a shake (true story - social workers were called in immediately one day when some passerby with the best of intentions saw me shaking myself a little too vigorously while berating myself saying "after all I do for you, with the cooking and self-affirmations and the promise to buy you the goat you have always wanted, this is what I get in return!?!!?" I couldn't blame the well-meaning citizen who called, I needed some help as I could have hurt myself and those meetings with the social worker, me and myself were among the most profound, emotional and utterly confusing I've ever experienced.

Throughout this all, I have gained a better understanding of grammar and spelling or at least writing gets you thinking about it all the time. I was never an elite grammarian and I did feel twinges of jealousy when a few of my friends came back from their retreat in the mountains telling stories that I never quite understood the gist of due to my not being on their level grammatically. Through writing this blog, I have become more aware and that is beneficial as becoming less aware would require a whole new set of hats and scarves. I'd also guess that being totally unaware, while blissfully fun, greatly limits your ability to garden and I've always wanted to learn how to garden mostly as a means to become slightly less dependant on others to provide my food for me - it's always made me feel a little unclean. So my current level of grammar and spelling and punctuation are far from perfect, but they are far better than they once were and while I am tempted to blow my own horn, it's in the shop right now and there is a noise-restriction in the townhouse complex I live in anyways.

I have blown many a horn in my time for reasons ranging from a dare from someone I thought was my friend (I should have heeded the advice my father gave me as a child which was never to blow a horn on a dare as it may get you in hot water - I ignored him as I was sitting in a pleasing hot water bath at the time I didn't see that a negative consequence in any way. I was also 6.), my way of training the wild geese I had been tasked to train by the wildlife park's general manager which had the opposite effect as it only riled them up to a level where they even refused to swim without water wings which just don't come in the right size and when I won the obscure award for the best rendition of a bookkeeper's uncle based on my work in a small play about a bookkeeper who, on his death bed, meets the uncle he never knew he had only to have to be rushed off to his dialysis appointment and have the surprise meeting with the relative he was never aware of cut quite short. Perfect grammar isn't my goal as it takes away from the relaxed nature in which I write and I believe in a world where there is a perfect level or image of everything but it is unreachable and incomprehensible by mere humans who are mortal and aren't perfect. I think it is more than just okay as it is our imperfections that define us and our acceptance of those imperfections that make us lovable, help us laugh at our own mistakes and not mind when our goofy buddy constantly messes up the take-out order. Why do we always let him order?