Scattered Nouns: People, Places, and Things All Over the Place

I've mentioned 'old writing' several times, now, and it leaves me with a twinge of regret.  How long have I been (not) writing?  If you're unlucky enough you need a money-making job, and unlucky enough you don't have someone taking care of your every responsibility, it's easy to fall victim to life getting in the way of writing (or any diversion).

I would go years without writing anything substantial.  Sometimes, in between, I scribbled thoughts down in notebooks, or sat at a computer, saving my ramblings about nothing in particular (I have a folder full of files named, for example, 2004-07-12.doc), but there were long lengths of time when nothing of note came forth.

Which, now, makes me older (through no fault of my own).  It's not that I regret not producing more, and sooner; it's just that I should have been practicing more.  Which is why I decided I must treat my writing as a part-time job.  And I can't just 'no call, no show.'  I've committed to twenty-five hours a week, and if I miss a day (when life gets in the way), I have to make up the time, later.

I count myself lucky, to some degree.  I now have the ability to produce--really move forward--in my projects, whenever I sit down.  That's a product of age.  It's not all luck; there's also deliberate, diligent effort and there's a scattering of ideas, which brings me to my title point.

Last Sunday morning I knew I was short on my twenty-five hours, and I was supposed to make up my time.  The problem was I was facing nine hours and I was feeling uninspired.

The first reason I thought I should be able to write something(s) for nine hours was that I have no less than a dozen on-going projects.  There are plays and prose (and another, less-stupid--though probably no musically better--musical).  There are projects in historical fiction, humor (anecdote/memoir), narrative fiction, satire, and even thriller/horror.  Among the projects, I can usually (though not last Sunday) find something calling to me.

Or should I say, someone?

Another reason I should have been able to do nine hours' work was each project has at least a few (and, in some cases, many) characters.  Characters have facets and depth (I hope, for goodness sake) and somewhere within them there should be something I like--or don't like--that would inspire me to start writing.  I tried to drum up some sort of inspiration from them last Sunday, but nobody wanted to boogie.

So I boogied on my own.

Tolstoy says, "Music is the shorthand of emotion."  (I looked it up on-line; I don't--can't & won't--quote Tolstoy off the top of my head.)  Having sat for ten minutes, uninspired and un-writing, I turned on internet radio.  I was in the mood for 1950's early Rock-n-Roll.  That was all it took:  a nudge from music.  Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, and Chubby Checker helped me put in nine hours of writing.

Granted, Etta James isn't going to roll up in my house singin' the blues and handin' me a plot.

Time, however, can.  Which is why I don't regret not producing more when I was younger.  I didn't have it in me.  I don't mean to discount young writers--hey, if you have it, work it, Baby.  Personally, I found though I could develop characters, describe settings, and delve into thoughts, a (big) problem remained:  nothing...  ever...  happened.  It took some life experience to get through that.  And it worked out in two different ways.

First, I read a book.

Leisure reading, as a writer, is a bit of a guilty pleasure.  "If I have the time to read a book, shouldn't I be writing, instead?"  Maybe...  but, no.  If nothing else, it brings you alternative approaches to style and structure.  For me, Anne Tyler truly cured me in an unexpected way.  I suffered from I-have-interesting-characters-and-perfect-settings-but-I-don't-have-a-plot-line-itis (look it up in any medical dictionary).  I've invested too much time reading Anne Tyler to disparage her - but she's not one to get overly concerned about plot.  By the time I got to my third or fourth of her novels, it occurred to me:  Anne Tyler is all about the characters; just as much as--if not more than--the plot.  Don't get me wrong, in Anne Tyler's novels, the characters do things, there is a plot, things happen.  But I began to realize that a book can be as much about the internal workings of the characters, their settings, and their surroundings as it is about getting from point A to point B in the narrative of the story.

Secondly, I answered a question.

I wrote a note in one of my college literature class text's margins that reads, "Is a person's life a series of episodes, building to a climax - or is it a string of otherwise unrelated events, bound together only by that common individual?"  Yes.  (It is both.)  Maybe all that is a little 'fillosofickul,' but the point is plot doesn't have to be grand.  If planning to make it out to the mailbox, then making it out to the mailbox, and having made it out to the mailbox contains a good story, doesn't that constitute a plot?  And if that story then includes a trip to the mailbox at ages fourteen, forty-one, and one hundred and four, wouldn't that make a plot?

In the end, I'm certainly no expert: I'm just sharing my thoughts.  (The only way I'm 'seasoned' is my salt-and-pepper hair.)  If nothing else, I've put in one and a half hours on my second-job (I only get half-time for blogging).