... happy tax day ...
April 15, 1999
5:32 a.m.
What a great quote on the sidebar, eh? That's a piece of Lisa Silverthorne's entry yesterday, and it really stuck home with me. I recently had an editor who I've sent a couple stories to tell me that he noticed a "tic" in my writing--in this case it was the use of a common phrase or action. I think it was smiling, actually. [ who would remember, he smiling? :)] The magic, I think, always misfires. It's the nature of magic. A writer will always always find it beneficial to be able to pull themselves out of their work and their world in order to look at it from a new perspective. But it's not human nature to do that. In my case, I went back and read the last four or five stories I had written, and sure enough, there they were. A little signature that Ron had been there. The first thing I did was breathe a little sigh of thanks to the editor in question, who was both good enough to see it, and thoughtful enough to point it out. The next thing I did was to slap myself around a little--to challenge myself to write from fresh perspectives. There are at least two levels of writing, though--story development, and implementation. The problem I just shared was in implementaiton. I had gotten lazy and fallen into habits. The idea generator is meant to be, a challenge to alter your perception just a little when it comes to story generation. The goal of idea generation is, I think, not to try so hard to find them, but to be able to constantly shift your focus to see things in different ways, to draw meaning from things that wouldn't mean the same thing to someone else. That shifting of perspective is like the magician's ritual, his speaking of the words of power. The writer hits a view, and next thing you know, the ideas tumble over each other too fast to write down. Then it's a game of craft. And hard work. Implementation. And understanding the illusionist's tricks we play on the readers to get them to believe in our little worlds.   The process of doing the idea generator thing has already been great for me. Just in putting the thing together I've gotten my juices flowing. Story thoughts happening. Anyone out there have a time generator? Working on a rewrite of the fantasy story, titled "Fields Barren in Springtime," right now. Should be done in a couple days. Have a good one.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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"I know, there should be this magic about writing stories, but my "magic" is misfiring. Maybe this won't work for me or anyone else, I don't know, but in the absence of raw talent, the next best thing is practice." Lisa Silverthorne |
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