IWSG Wednesday August

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“When it don’t come easy…” Title words to one of my favorite songs by Kathy Griffin. My writing life is often this way. Lately I’ve wondered if I’ll ever really finish this novel I’ve been working on for too long now. 

“Time keeps moving from a crawl to a run…” My daily time seems to crawl and I feel I can’t lift my feet. My yearly time is running away without me. I can’t keep up.

“If you break down, I’ll drive out and find you…” So, whenever I’m trying to get my gears going again I sometimes read other writer’s books on writing and this time I chose “Zen in the Art of Writing” by Ray Bradbury.  I can’t believe I’ve only just found this book of essays. RB’s total being is consumed with writing, and the joy he finds in it almost makes me feel ashamed. Well not almost. It does. I cried.

“I don’t know nothing but that change will come…” Ashamed of my seeming cowardice, lack of enthusiasm and general grumpy complaining, got me to thinking after reading and absorbing his total commitment to his craft and his joy in that commitment, that it is far and away time for me to find my joy in writing again. Because I’ve lost it.

“You're out there walking down a highway, and all of the signs got blown away. Sometimes you wonder if you're walking in the wrong direction.” I’m walking in the wrong direction. I must find my joy again. I’m going to test RB’s advice to look inside, listen to my subconscious and remember memories. Associate words with my imagination and give in to whatever I find there.  It’s time to move and dream and find joy. It’s time to reassess, even… “When It Don’t Come Easy.”

If you care to hear the song, here it is....

Idioms and Clichés

1     Idiom Definition: A set expression of two or more words that means something other than the literal meanings of its individual words. (By Richard Nordquist, About.com Guide)

2   Cliché Definition:

A trite expression, often a figure of speech whose effectiveness has been worn out through overuse and excessive familiarity. (By Richard Nordquist, About.com Guide)

Examples:

a   Idiom: she can’t write (or whatever verb) to save her life, this means that the writer is a bad writer.

b   Cliché: Straw that broke the camel’s back; Live and learn; Kick the bucket; What goes around comes around.

What is the difference between idioms and clichés?

From what I’ve garnered from numerous style and grammar books and the internet, the difference is over usage, and that idioms usually can’t be understood STRICTLY by their wording whereas clichés might be. Sometimes idioms are clichés and vice versa. Okay, that’s clear, right?

When I write a first draft, it’s chocked full of idioms or clichés because I’m in a hurry and know I can change it later. I don’t want to stop to “correct” something or write “wonderfully” in my first draft because I’m on a roll (usually) and need to get the story-bones down. Later there will be time to shift to “great” writing, inserting details, taking out all lazy clichés/idioms. By the time I’m “knee deep” (lol) in my twentieth draft (no lol!)

I try to stay away from idioms and clichés because I don’t want to sound like everyone else. Idioms can be put to good use to get an idea or point across, but sometimes I feel I’m being a lazy writer if I have to use idioms or clichés (except in dialog). I’d rather try and come up with something on my own to portray what I need to get across, like the great Ray Bradbury did. He made up his own idioms and because he did it so well, it didn’t matter that no one else used them, or did they?

Do you use idioms or clichés? How do you make them work for you instead of drawing readers’ attention away from the story? How do you make them your own?

Images from:

tx.english-ch.com 

sueraypolenews.blogspot.com 

Develop

Okay, instead of writing about developing a character or a scene, today I write about the development of a writer and developing a first draft, which are in some ways the same. Both begin a journey somewhere and travel an unknown road.

The first draft. How do you write yours? I’m one of those who begin with an idea. Sometimes the idea is a person.  I also start an outline, especially if I’m going to have a lot of characters and action in the story, which I don’t always know in the beginning. But I like the idea of an outline so I start one.  I then write, sometimes longhand, sometimes on the computer, and expound upon my idea or person until a story begins to take shape. I like this process but hate the stopping and starting of writing that is necessary at this point because I must find the road I’m looking for. I don’t always know in the beginning where the idea/person will take me, but even when I do, finding the way is sometimes difficult because I’m thinking, “we’ll take a left up ahead,” but then we take a right and the story shifts in a different direction than I thought it would. I think that’s why an outline is good. It is the road map I begin with even if I rarely stay with it all the way through. I just need the guide at the start to help me get moving. Then I write until I get to the end, but not always in a linear fashion. Often I write scenes and then put them together after, but I always go until I get to the end. Then I put it away and do something else for a while. When I come back to it, I’m ready to revise, revise, and revise. Am I crazy because I love that part?

As a writer my development has been good but slow, I think. I write but don’t always write well and that is my challenge. To write well. I don't kid myself. I am more of a simplistic writer than fancy. I love to tell a story but don't have to be a "literary" writer. One of the A to Z blogs I read yesterday used “boring” as her B theme and as I read her post I realized that I fight being a boring writer on a daily basis. It’s fine to put words to paper, but if no one likes to read them, it doesn’t matter what you write. So, my back seat drivers, a persistent little devil (self doubt) and unwavering little angel (cheerleader), keep me looking for new roads, new ways to imagine and articulate things, how to express myself and how best to encourage my readers to accompany me on my journey. 

Ray Bradbury perfected this art to brilliancy. Can’t count how many times I’ve wished I was him!  

Ray Bradbury

 Images from:

 beyond.customline.com

rwanycblogginginthebigapple.blogspot.com 

 

Ray Bradbury

 How can he be gone? Yes, I do understand that he was as human as the rest of us, supposedly, but as another writer I know said, I never imagined my living without him in the world. He was my first true love when it comes to reading. He gave my imagination permission to stretch out beyond the boundaries I lived in. He scared me. He made me think. He painted pictures with his words and ideas. I could always visualize what I was reading about and that sometimes made it more than scary, more than real; more than wonderful. He inspired me.

It’s hard to think that perhaps a world might exist like the one he painted in Fahrenheit 451, but in truth, we’ve already seen this and worse. I think the melancholy thread that ran through so much of his work brought those works home to my heart. I could sympathize, I could relate, I could live and breathe in the stories he told. I sit here now crying as if I’d actually known Ray Bradbury as a friend. I can imagine that, to an extent, because that is the kind of writer he was. He brought you into his world (s).This is the legacy he left to me and to everyone else. 

I’ve always wanted to be a writer because I so loved stories. My dad wrote. And I read Ray Bradbury and others in my forming years to distraction. I don’t know how old I was when I read my first Ray Bradbury, but I stood beside that little boy at the fence watching rocket ships take off, dreaming of reaching into the stars and finding adventure and wonder there.

So, I will stop writing this now or I’ll go on all day. I am grieving that I never met him in person, that I didn’t take the time to write to him and tell him how he touched me, but that is my own grief. He had no need of knowing that from me. I will treasure him, and the gifts he left for us, forever in my heart. And later, when my grief is muted to sadness, the true test I face will be to once again tap on these keys and try to do justice to the wonder he gave my soul permission to feel.

Good bye Ray Bradbury. I hope you are on Mars looking back at us and laughing.

Images from:

hereandnow.wbur.org

imgace.com

fishink.us

Firsts…

 Blogging about firsts sure takes one on a ride. Wow, talk about walking in the past through the halls of the future.  I remember so many things, and not necessarily all of my “firsts”. 

I do, however, remember my first true love. I met him when I was twelve, was “dating” him when I was fourteen and broke up with him when I was nineteen. I wore him like a second skin most of my life. I, because of this experience, completely understand Romeo and Juliet and the passion they shared. I totally understand teenage angst and how it feels like the beginning or end of the world. He was a part of what shaped me. Those years formed who we became. He took me for a ride I’ll never forget. I hope he won’t either! There is a French song, “Une Lettre” by Jean Jacques Goldman which is about a man writing a letter to his first love and in it he asks; did we live the same story? I asked myself this many times and found my answer to be that even if we didn’t, whatever story we lived was amazing, frightening, painful and full of life. Isn’t that what it’s all about?

 

The first song that I remember loving, listening to until I knew all the words, and then still trying to understand them, was “Suzanne” by Leonard Cohen. The album which carried this song was played in my home from the time I can remember, and the woman in chains among the flames on the back of the album only increased my interest in it. My mother’s name is Sue. I equated the mystery of this song to the beauty and mystery of my mother. The song talked about Suzanne as if from a distance and how magic she made one feel. It seemed to fit my mother. I still LOVE this song. I still think of my mother as a mystery.

The first “movie”/piece de theatre that I fell in love with, that marked me, that I went right out and bought the soundtrack to was “Hair!” I saw it on stage when but a youngster, and then saw the movie in 1979 when it came out.  I’d seen “Woodstock”, but Hair took me to places I’d never known were possible. I really fell for the story, the music, and the characters. I couldn’t get enough of it.

The first story/book that made an impression on me was a short story in Ray Bradbury’s “R is for Rocket” or “S is for Space.” The image of a young boy standing at the fence looking through it to see the rockets blasting off and dreaming of being an astronaut haunted me for a very long time. I read everything Ray Bradbury wrote for years. He has a way of telling a story that I would bleed to be able to, not copy him, but write as well and distinctly as he does in my own way. His words, his narrative has punch and it got me in the gut all the time. Still does.

What were your firsts?