Writing The Wave-Chapter 1

Here’s the start of another project. Doing the exercises in a writing workbook, this one called Writing The Wave. No idea where this is headed, but I have plenty of time right now and need a new project. The book contains 12 chapters. My idea is that each blog post will contain the ideas from 1 chapter.

Here’s the book.

Monsters Beware (p. 14).

List three times in your life when “wasting time” turned out to be fruitful

Hmmmmm.

1. Starting this project

2. Tuning my guitar to an Open G tuning and then composing a song only based on sounds, and not wondering or caring about what notes I was playing.

3. Finding an ordinary object, like a bicycle, and taking as many different photographs of it S I could think of.

List 3 kinds of activities where rushing into things is a bad idea

1. Buying a house without knowing where the money will come from

2. Cutting a friend out of your life because of something that they write online or said to you

3. Taking, or quitting, a job

List five real writers and for each, why you do and why you don’t want to be like him or her.

Donald Barthelme. Inventive and boundless scenes and a free approach to the “rules” of grammar and syntax. Sometimes the writing is aimless and not cohesive-or at least the cohesiveness isn’t apparent to me.

Robert Hunter-fantastic imagery and wordplay in his song lyrics. But sometimes I don’t understand them.

Frank Zappa-turn off the censors and write or sing about whatever you want. At times, some of his more inflammatory thoughts or idea can it be shared with ithers

Kurt Vonnegut-the length and breadth of his writing career is admirable. In his later years his ideas started to ramble.

Marshall McLuhan. His analysis of media bordered on a philosophical view. But his works turn out to be repetitive.

List three times you tried Discipline in your life. What were the results?

1. Went to a new gym by my house every day for a month. Learned a lot about fitness. Discovered step class. Met some cool people.

2. Did at least 5 minutes of free writing the first thing every day at work-for quite a long time. This “free play” helped get that side of me out every day so I could better focus on the more methodical task associated with my job.

3. Wanted to quickly advance to the next level in my guitar playing. I set my alarm 20 minutes earlier and practiced every day for at least 39 minutes, which I’ve essentially continued for many years afterwards.

List 3 natural phenomena that embody stages of creative development.

1. The cooking of an egg. Once it is cooked, it’s always cooked and can never go back to its original state.

2. The creation, strengthening, landfall, and dissipation of a hurricane.

3. Photosynthesis. Energy from a source is turned into mass and different kinds of energy.

Five Ways That My Writing is no good. Then cross out every one of them.

1. I try to use simple words and sentences
2. if I have any characters, they are shallow and uninteresting
3. Ideas are easy, but they never get finished
4. I don’t have a regular schedule
5. i like pens and paper more than writing

List ten ways that you procrastinate about writing, and then, for each item, list a reason why writing is a more pleasurable and life enhancing activity.

1. I prefer to write with pen and paper, and they aren’t always available and at the ready. Once I start though, it’s satisfying to see a page or pages filled with ink.
2. I have electronic notes, scraps of paper, a sea of notebooks, all filled with random thoughts, pieces of song lyrics, or random doodles. But nothing is finished. This is actually ok. If there was a way to retrieve this stuff “on demand” that would be cool.
3. Autocorrect is very frustrating and slows me down when using my iPad or a computer. Two choices here. Continue to go with it or use failed autocorrect as another source of inspiration. My favorite, from years ago, is when autocorrect fixed a Facebook post of mine to instead say “autocorrect ducks”.
4. I’ve always thought of writing as something that you sit down to do, as opposed to someone that you are. From my Real Job we called it “Constancy of Purpose”. Over time, even little bursts of writing can add up to an impressive oeuvre of work.
5. Oh, I get it. By forcing me to write a list of ten items, and a reason for each, you are forcing me to write stuff. Tricky bastards.
6. we never find time for drudgery. Is writing drudgery? Not really. Does it ever feel like drudgery? Sometimes.
7. I see that I’m deviating already from the rules of this assignment. You know what? I don’t care.
8. All that I really want to do is to get to the bottom of this list so that I can shift my attention to The Fun Stuff and complete Chapter 1. I guess I have a goal, and I’m going to complete it!
9. Part of me says that I’m writing all of this down for myself and no one will ever see this. Like many pursuits, writing needs to be self satisfying. If other people enjoy it. Fine. In this respect, it has parallels to music making and practice.
10. well, lookee here. Item 10. I’m declaring victory.
    

List 5 really terrible things that can happen when Something Else takes over your writing

• I no longer know what the story is about
• I don’t know what the characters are doing
• The arc that the story or article was on are changing
• I get frustrated and stop. Maybe forever
• The story or writing turn out to be longer, or much shorter, than I thought it would be

List 5 really great things that can happen when Something takes over your writing

• I discover new words, connections between ideas or characters, or plot twists and analyses that I hadn’t considered
• My writing and word selection becomes more colorful, or poetic
• I feel energized to keep going. To discover for myself what happens
• I’m more likely to find something I want to share
• It’s fun

Finally, here’s a 5 minute timed write.

Why am I doing this? Very simple. I want to tap into another dimension of my brain. The verbal side, to see what’s in there. I have great respect for writers, and lyricists. Maybe not as much as in other lines of work, but want to know more. plus it’s fun to learn new stuff.

Where will this activity be in The coming months or years? who knows. Maybe I’ll write the book I’ve always had in my head (which I spent quite a bit of time on 15 years ago). Maybe I’ll step up my songwriting. Or maybe his activity will remain dormant under the ever growing pile of Great Ideas or Great Starts that never quite got off the ground. Another thing that’s different this time is that my efforts are more public than in the past. Does that make me more accountable to others? Not sure. Does it make me more accountable to myself? Not sure about that either. What I do know is that I have a mission at least for the next 12 chapters of this book.

Timer off.