Story idea.

[kitchen_kink]

Reading Stephanie Vaughn's wonderfully simple and elegant Sweet Talk has got me thinking of story ideas from my own life. The obsessive way Scott used to make shopping lists. The hours I would spend in front of the computer, him frustrated at the time taken away from him, even as he cut into weekend time together with his ridiculously ritualistic housekeeping behaviors. Vaughn manages to write stories that revolve around the major points in a life: a divorce, a father's death, a mother's cancer, a short-lived but obsessive relationship, without concentrating on the event itself: she instead weaves between the lines of the events, fills in the blank spaces, the details of the lives that go on, inexorably, during life's little tragedies.

Just write, you crazy person. Stop thinking about whether it's a novel or a story or whether it's going anywhere or not. Stop being so afraid of it and just write, sit down and just write, just write, write, write and shut up.

Comments

Scribbling and bibbling

[crownedclown.livejournal.com]

I once read that "...writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair." That being said, from your last couple of posts it would seem it's in you. Get it out!

Re: Scribbling and bibbling

[dietrich.livejournal.com]

Thanks...it's just tough because I haven't written any substantial piece of new work since last May, when I turned in my MFA thesis...

Hey, who are ya by the way? (Always just curious how people stumble across my journal...)

Re: Scribbling and bibbling

[crownedclown.livejournal.com]

I'm a newbie. A friend of mine recommended I check out LJ and I can't thank her enough for it. There is something intoxicating about posting your thoughts out there for everyone to see. Sort of like waving a rod in a thunderstorm shouting, Hey this is me! daring lightning to strike. At the end of my work day when I usually post to my own journal, I check out other folks journals in the Boston area. Just to sort of see who's out there and say hello. Writing is always tough even when it's just your own thoughts. Forget about fiction or anything else. Half the time I write down my thoughts and read it out loud to discover what I wrote is not what I meant. How's it go? "I know you believe you understand what you think I said but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant"

It's rather amazing that verbal communication, with the added tools of emphasis and body language seems so simple, while writing offers none of those "cheats" as it were. How often do you understand what someone said even though you know they didn't actually say what they meant? (See what I mean?) Anyway, good luck with it. ;)

So it seems

[lightcastle.livejournal.com]

Just write. Seems easy. Never is. But I'm all for you doing it. Maybe that will get me to.

[imlad.livejournal.com]

Actually, I do think that "just writing" could be easy - if you don't try to frame it - story, novel, play, poem, etc. Slowly, the form and even the topic emerge out the the sense of style.