Challenging Myself: 2013

[scribblemyname]

2013 is an exercise in forcing myself to stretch my wings and grow, particularly in the area of discipline. I've been almost startled at how intensely my writing and even blogging world now revolves around the challenges I have given myself.

Finishing Things

The 365 Challenge is essentially a demand to finish things. Not just any thing, but things people want to read. The parameters are hardly binding or limiting, but I do get prompts in the form of questions that make me stop, pause, and ask myself: Do I want to answer this question? How do I want to answer this question? There are dark moments in my characters' lives that I'm not much inclined to get into, but I know them, like my own dark moments, even better. They are worn from internal repetition.

It's also making me stretch because I want each piece to mostly stand alone. There are exceptions. The drabbles for 100 Word Stories need to stand alone, but not as stringently. You can't give a broad sweep of a moment. It has to be very tight, narrowed, and focused.

Reading Inspiration

It was lithiumlaughter that suggested I do more reading this year, and I took her word for it. I've got several unpublished books on my plate from writerly friends and several more from BookRooster, which I'll need to review once I've finally done reading them. Which is also how I got started back into poetry. I yanked out all my writing magazines the other week and started flipping through them, to remind myself of the things I once knew and simply immerse myself back into that authoritative vibe.

I discovered Billy Collins poem, "Adage," and one of my favorites ever, "Anyways" by Suzanne Cleary, and so many others, and then lithiumlaughter introduced me to "Litany in Which Certain Things are Crossed Out," with which I'm in love.

...leaping out of the frying pan of yourself / into the fire of someone else

— "Adage" by Billy Collins

Reading the rhythm of language and the way intense things are presented inside of these poems has inspired me, and I found myself writing a good bit of poetry, stuff I never would have attempted otherwise, with experiments deemed somewhat less than perfectly successful, such as "The Un-Study" and pieces I absolutely love, as "Litterae" and "Normal written in coffee grounds."

Reading G. Jackson's novel-in-progress made me itch to try fiction written in a completely different style from my norm. I've hesitated to jump into this particularly frying pan, but I cannot deny the itch is present and well-accounted for.

On Creativity

Having the 365 Challenge page with its measured progress made me put together a page for the 100 Things Challenge, a blogging challenge I haven't finished yet, have barely even well begun. It made me want to get back up on that pony and start writing for it again. It's not so much about just finishing things as really growing myself by considering creativity, what it means to me, how I practice it.

So that's my 2013. Besides the other standard goals of get a day job, eat better, etc. Thanks all of you for how you inspired and continue to inspire me.

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Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[pygmymuse.livejournal.com]

I do get prompts in the form of questions that make me stop, pause, and ask myself: Do I want to answer this question? How do I want to answer this question? There are dark moments in my characters' lives that I'm not much inclined to get into, but I know them, like my own dark moments, even better.

How to go into the dark is always an issue. I write so many broken characters with lots of trauma in their lives, and even I don't want to know too much detail of what they went through because it's painful. I tend to show moments up to when it gets bad or pick up after the worst parts and show them in the aftermath versus putting it all down in words. It's in some ways a tasteful fade out, sort of lets them keep some of their privacy, and also allows me to stay at a more comfortable level. I know bad things happen to good people, and I know that the bad and the trauma can be overcome, and that's the part that I want to show, not the horror of the moment.

Other people can be graphic. I've chosen not to, and I don't think I'll change my mind about that.

Don't know if that helps you, but that's something you could consider.

Reading G. Jackson's novel-in-progress made me itch to try fiction written in a completely different style from my norm. I've hesitated to jump into this particularly frying pan, but I cannot deny the itch is present and well-accounted for.

So... what is this way of writing that you want to explore?

[scribblemyname]

I'm the same way. I tend to skirt the actual moments and stick to the edges of them, showing the object via the shadows. It's tricky though.

But yes, yes, about graphic. Something I said once about why I loved Divergent:

It's a book that does not flinch, but does not flaunt. For some reason, a lot of fiction nowadays glories in its atrocities. It's graphic, it's violent, it gorges our senses and desensitizes us to the horror it's portraying. There's a word for this: gratuitous. A scene is far more chilling for what it doesn't say, rather than what it does. I want to understand clearly and readily the depths of what is going on, even if that understanding is truly terrible, but I don't want to be stuck with images in my mind I can never unsee. I don't want to be traumatized by a book. Fear is not healthy. Fear is not a tool to wield on oneself.

And as for the experimental method—hmmm... In brief, the story is essentially a letter (or letters) from one character to another. It's an I writing to a you. But it's not formatted as a letter. It's a story, split into two storylines about two different seasons that alternate. It's a structure that daunts me, and keeping it out of the mess of universes it could overlap with makes me also consider leaving it off the table for a while.

[pygmymuse.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is tricky.

I think that letting some things be up to the imagination is better in many cases, and I also think you can get enough out of what's implied and what's left out than what's in there.

One of my favorite things to do is to have someone ask how bad things are and know by a look or silence that it's truly terrible. Words aren't even necessary. The implication is enough, you know worse is coming or has happened.

Letters, huh? Interesting idea.

Lol. I was just reminded earlier of how I have ways of connecting almost all of my stories (with the exception of certain scifi/fantasy ones) to the others. One overused name led me to sequel that's a bit of a crossover, despite my best efforts to keep the two separate.