Draft or Bottled?

Every summer I say I am going to write. Every summer I say I am going to be an artist for the summer. This summer, I started. I hope I can follow through. I think follow-through is harder than starting or ending.

I guess my mantra for the summer is:

 Write where I want to be 

because I would not like my inner self and already atrophied adult being to curl up into a desiccated and stale chunk of what used to resemble human creativity.

I know that's too long to be a mantra, but maybe I'll just repeat the first part, "Write where you want to be". I guess it would be the way out of writer's block for the day. If all comes up dry, write about that. Where would I like to be - physically, mood-wise, career-wise, spiritually, etc. I can go anywhere and it all relates back to the goal, writing every day.


Draft or Bottled?


The first author that ever made me see prose as something gorgeous, the magical Ray Bradbury, described inspiration as one of those things you don't have the luxury of just letting walk on by. You have to take the muse when it comes and just write. Do not wait. The spark will not be there when you get back. The butterfly in the jar will have run out of air. I agree. I once told a friend of mine who wrote every day, all the time, continuously that writing for me was more like an urge to pee. If I felt I had to do it now, I couldn't hold it. I couldn't force it either. Oh, the luxury of being a college student writer. I believed that's how I would write forever. However, once adult life strapped itself to my head, sucked all of my whimsy away and replaced it with functional concerns like work, bills, chores, errands and other petrifying agents, my creative self started to stiffen and become more and more woodlike. 


It has been easy to put the playtime "arting" and crafting and writing to the back when my profession only demands these things of me on rare occasions. It's extremely easy to get lost in the exhaustion excuses or to fill my day with other things - even healthy things like working out or cleaning or cooking, etc. However, for someone like me who had their ships pointed toward writing and creating, to keep veering off and settling at other ports all slowly chips away at something in the back of oneself. It's that part of me that knows I am avoiding the big stuff because I am scared of it working, terrified of my love for it and the lukewarm reception of others and all the other things that come with creativity. Sometimes it's not even what others may think because having the opinions of others is essential to seeing the world from outside of the cranial command center of our egos. Sometimes it's just seeing what is usually inside and even hidden from ourselves in a tangible outside form. Maybe that's what giving birth is really like. Ray Bradbury called his books his children. Well, my self-worth had enough of cowardice ruling the joint and decided it was time to write some children. 


I decided to write for at least two hours every day to start and to blog at least once a week about the process. I had to decide about what I was aiming for. Is it a book? I guess it may be a book. Is it planned out or is it free flow?
Bottle or draft?


I have heard writers explain both. Some authors like to write and see what the characters do on their own. I saw an author speak a while ago about the complicated maps and taped together pieces of paper she creates to chart out her plots before she even begins so she knows the aim of each chapter. It covered an entire wall and collapsed to fit in her pocket so she could unfurl it whenever she got lost along the way.


Because of my affinity for logic puzzles (and I DO LOVE logic puzzles and puzzle games), I am going to hybrid and see where that takes me. I tell my students when they write to first brainstorm. Just let your mind go and put everything you've got onto the table, like idea-vomit. Just purge - no restrictions or self-doubt. Then, pick through it (vomit metaphor not so great). Find what you like. Now, write in that direction. Then we go back and fix and go back and fix and go back and fix if we need to. Once you've got the clay on the table, you can work with it.  I tend to think that in this compromise of the planned versus free tactic you are writing freely, but toward an event or destination or with some kind of development in mind. Like this, you can still add in subplots and other character details and then maintain the thrill of solving your self-made puzzle and do in in a way that will move the reader.


Even though I usually try to work with the hybrid model of draft/bottle, there are exceptions. The other day, I caught a butterfly. An idea came to me after a trail of musings and I held on to it (rare for me and my Memento memory) and I did not take Mr.Bradbury's advice, mainly because I was in the bathroom of Universal Studios theme park at the time, and put that butterfly in a jar. Today I checked to see if it was still alive and it worked enough to get the start of something. Unplanned, but going somewhere. I still have no idea what is going to happen, but as each paragraph unfolds, I find that my subconscious has been writing a story all along, it just hasn't shown me yet. 


I think at the end of it all, planned or unplanned - it's like anything else, doing is better than not doing. Just write.