Lots of other people are lots more successful than I am about writing and actually being able to make a living at it.
Such as Ray Bradbury. There is a great video of him giving writing advice. You can find it HERE.
I recommended this video to a friend recently, and in so doing watched it again. Here is what I picked up from it when I watched it this time:
Writing is about having integrity. If you lose your integrity then usually the muse takes a vacation. Ray says Be true to your own fear. Collect up these fears and write about them.
Or gather up those hated things in your life. Pick them up like field mice and bop their heads until their bloody brains leak from their ears. Your stories are going to shine when you write of what you hate and how you killed it.
Or make a list of then things you love madly and write about them.
A true writer understands that writing isn't something you do. It's something you're called to. And the story has some mystical clutch on its creator which I cannot explain even though I've experienced it a lot.
Ray says, "All of my books have been surprises. I've never known where...I'm going. That's the great fun."
I get that. I've had this scene in my head for a couple of years now. It involves a dunking booth and two people who are in love with each other. I pictured the dunking tank as the catylist for a declaration of love. But who?
Well, I thought it was going to be Amy and Riley, my two characters from Rescue Me. Somebody needs to be the first to say 'I love you'. And I was thinking maybe the town needed a new fire truck. Maybe I could have the dunking booth scene here.
So, I wrote and I wrote.
And there wasn't a new firetruck.
But there was a new playground.
But a dunking booth never materialized.
Even when I got to the 'The End'.
But that scene was still there. Who was going to be in the tank? And who would throw the ball? My current WIP (work in progress) was shaping up to having a dunk tank, but even when I had written the setting, I still didn't know who was going to get dunked.
How could I not know?
I agonized over this. I told myself, 'This is crazy. No one can know this but me. I have to be the one to decide, but how?'
I sat down, trudged through the scene, and it happened. And it's just like Ray said. I was surprised. I didn't know it was going to be this way. And, yeah, it is great fun.
Do you like the not knowing of the manufactured world? Do you think it's fun to be the hands typing events which shock the heck out of you? Do you like having the control to kill what you hate, and for it to be completely legal?
Tonight I'm within a cockroach's leg of finishing this book. I've dunked who needed dunking. The "L" word has been mentioned (because, yes, I write those kinds of books). And now I just need to pick out the wrapping paper, find the tape, and tie it up with a pretty bow.
I hope, anyway.
I don't want to get bogged down in the little disgusting hairs on the bug's leg. Or examine too closely the bendy part and wonder what kind of joint a disgusting bug like that has. Is it an insect? I don't see the three parts to the body. Only that gross leg. If I pinch it, I will hear the crisp break and feel satisfaction and revulsion all at the same time.
Gee, I really shouldn't have listened to The Cockroach which ate Cincinnati, should I?
Ummm, what were we talking about?
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