How's the writing going?

You’ve all heard the question before. Every writer has. Maybe you’ve anticipated it and given a well-thought-out, succinct answer. Maybe you were just excited someone asked and prattled on and on about how it’s all going; your voice rising an octave while your hand gestures increasing dramatically, all the while telling the poor, unsuspecting person the plot of your amazing story in intricate detail. Or maybe … just maybe, like me, you cringed inwardly and stumbled over some excuse about not having the time, life getting in the way, your busy schedule, etc, etc …

So, how’s the writing going?

Mazzy Adams wrote a post the other week about her muse. Mine got lost somewhere between Darwin and Toowoomba. Either that, or he went on long service leave, flew to one of the islands close to the Bermuda Triangle and got lost.

Last year I moved back up to Darwin. It was the wrong move. Right for various reasons, wrong for my creative flare and so-called muse. I decided to move back down to Toowoomba to the delight of the Quirky Quills and started a small part time job. Perfect. More time to sit down and write, learn the guitar and perhaps even get my motorbike licence. That’s what I wanted. God had other plans.

The job has turned into a full time Store Manager position which takes up most of my time. I’ve been sick multiple times this year with a few injuries in between. I bought a guitar, but it sadly sits on its stand, hardly used. I did complete my motorbike learners licence, however I’ve only been out on my bike once. To top off the first half of this year, I’m having to watch what I eat because my body seems to be disagreeing with something I have yet to identify.

I had so many plans this year. To write, to read, to learn new things, but EVERYTHING has been turned upside down by ‘life happens’.

So, how’s the writing going?

It’s funny. When life happens I get so caught up in feeling guilty for the simple fact I’m not writing. My creativity seems tapped out, bled dry from all the mind-numbing ‘happenings’ of my day-to-day life. I get to the end of each day having put a hundred percent into everything I did and all I can do is sit down and breathe. There is nothing left, but I still feel guilty.

All those memes telling me to write. All those blog posts of encouragement and helpful tips. All those writers telling me I should write everyday regardless of how I feel. Even if it’s a small journal entry of what happened that day. Get into a schedule, girl! Most of those I can ignore, but when someone who knows I like to write asks how it’s going, I cringe.

I cringe because of all the good advice I’ve been given. I’m surrounded by a writing community and see everyone else pursuing their dreams, publishing books, writing, editing, creating their worlds. I wonder what’s wrong with me. Why don’t I have the same passion at the moment? The same discipline. The same drive. Why aren’t I pushing myself to write regardless of whether I have the mental capacity to do so? Why have I let life happens get to me?

So, how’s the writing going?

‘There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: … I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time …’

Ecclesiastes 3:1-11 NIV

I’m looking at this all wrong. This is not my season to write. Life does happen and there is a time for everything. Your time to write might not be now either. You may be experiencing a similar situation. Your muse may have met up with mine. You don’t have to feel guilty because you’re not pursuing a particular part of your life. Other things may be happening at the moment which need the extra creative energy. You’re still using your creativity, you’re just using it in a different way. It could be problem-solving, brainstorming new ideas, character building yourself, not your stories.

We all go through hard times. Some more than others. Those times we need to focus our energy elsewhere to grow and learn. If you’re working through some big things at the moment, don’t be so hard on yourself if you don’t have the energy to write and you sit at your computer and stare blankly at the screen. Your season will come. Focus on what’s happening now. Experience it. Live it. Lean in and allow the breeze to direct dictations.

K.A Hart is a born and bred Territorian who moved to Queensland and had no choice but to stay after her assimilation into the Toowoomba's infamous, collective known as Quirky Quills.

Since then, K.A. Hart has had two short stories published. Stone Bearer, appears in Glimpses of Light and Tedious Tresses, in the As Time Goes By Mixed Blessings anthology. She is currently in life happens stasis.

Poking the Muse: Weird, Wacky, or Wonderfully Worthwhile?

Mazzy Adams

The Muse can be a fickle and cantankerous beast. Give it a deadline and it will run away and hide behind any number of obstacles and excuses, be it a flu virus, a family crisis, or the sudden need to binge watch six seasons of a thirty-year-old television series because, you know, you can never experience too much historic authenticity in research mode … (a worthy cause according to The Right Honourable Idle Pro Crastination). Yet that same Muse will shove its stubborn creativity under your nose when you’re trying to grocery shop, work the 9 to 5, drive a car, cook dinner, shower, catch up on desperately needed sleep, or during any number of awkward and inappropriate moments.

Despite her unpredictable (and unreliable) nature, I’ve learned to truly appreciate my creative writing muse. Her weird, wild, wasteful, wistful, and wonderful moods have actually inspired some worthwhile words over the years—not to mention several truly wacky ideas.

But hey, I love her anyway.

When we first met, I thought my muse was amazing—funny, clever, sophisticated—and with my typing prowess, surely we were a match made in heaven. First love …

is blind.

(Image by 139904 from Pixabay)

Truly great relationships don’t just happen. Ours was no exception. Our relationship needed nurturing. It took time and effort for us to discover each other and to develop an understanding of each other’s hopes and dreams. It demanded tolerance, patience, persistence, perseverance and mutual respect (we agreed Alliterers Anonymous meetings didn’t work for either of us).

We spent our courtship hours creating quick responses to writing prompts for uni, socialising with other writers (and their muses), dreaming and scribbling together, chatting about all the wonderful places we could visit, all the friends we’d make along the way, arguing over which of us would take the rap for the characters we planned to kill off, choosing cream and white sheets to make up our literary bed, picking out names for our book babies …  

Though I speak tongue-in-cheek, for a writer, the relationship between inspiration and actual, useful text on a page requires active encouragement, engagement, and frequently, some outside assistance (like education and counselling). Poems, flash fiction, memoirs, novels, informative and/or inspirational works of non-fiction don’t magically arrive perfect and mature on the first draft. It takes informed effort to transform ideas into useful and entertaining literature. For this reason, I say kudos to every writer who perseveres to improve their craft.

But today, I don’t want to focus on the hard slog of editing and perfecting. I simply want to rejoice in that crazy, delightful ‘something’ that calls and inspires people to write—that’s calling you to write. I want to celebrate the huge variety of writing styles, voices, forms and expressions arising from the relationship between muse and writer. I want to sing and splash around in the bubbling flow that springs to life when the muse turns on the faucet. I want to thank God for it. Thank him for the fun and the frustration alike. Thank him for the solid, worthy ideas that translate into powerful text. And thank him for the absurd, quirky ideas that remind me to embrace the momentum of words and enjoy the ride.

Speaking of quirky ideas, 10% of the marks for some of my creative writing uni subjects were earned by completing ‘Quick Writing Exercises’. Students were required to read the prompt, write for ten minutes by the clock, post the piece to the forum and engage in mutual feedback and discussion. I found the challenge daunting at first, but also very fruitful, because it taught me to think beyond the obvious, to stretch my imagination, to get words on the page without stressing about their initial quality (big ask for a pedant and perfectionist) and, ultimately, to not only discover my ‘voice’ but to trust and treasure it. Like all good relationships, I believe our connection to the writing craft grows in quality as we invest in it and strengthen it through engagement.   

  

If your relationship with the muse is a tad stale, if you’ve been neglecting it (willingly or reluctantly) of late and it needs a bit of a jump start, or if your muse has been persnickety, hiding behind excuses when it should be making you a cup of tea, perhaps it’s time to try a quick writing exercise or two. All it takes is a prompt not unlike the example* I’ve posted below (or a word, an image, the poke of an umbrella …) and ten minutes of your time. It’s a small but invaluable investment for such an important relationship don't you think?

One of my favourite uni prompts was this:

*Write a piece that begins with the words, ‘I write this sitting in the kitchen sink …’

The variety of responses posted to the forum ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous, but it was a great deal of fun. Here’s what I wrote way back then. Why not give it a go? If you’re game, post your piece in the comments.

Sitting in the Kitchen Sink

‘I write this sitting in the kitchen sink’ is an intriguing opening to a story. It raises so many questions at so many levels.

At level one, I consider the grammatical structure and its implications; if the absence of a full stop and capital letter is intentional and not accidental, the introduction proposes several truly mind-boggling possibilities. For example, I can envisage a scenario which quite reasonably puts me in the sink. I’ve cleaned the gable windows above my kitchen sink before and very nearly come a cropper. A landing in the kitchen sink would be a more viable option for survival than a continuance of movement downwards to the floor.

If, however, my comfortably large posterior is actually lodged in my kitchen sink, I doubt that I would have the peace of mind or inclination, given the unlikely and clearly uncomfortable circumstances, to engage myself with pen and paper and wile away several minutes, hours or days in creative composition. I suspect my first, and only, priority would be to dislodge myself from my constricted circumstances with as much haste and as little pain as possible.

At level two, conditional upon the previous assumption of grammatical correctness of course, another possible scenario involves my accidental exposure to some strange beam of light which has transformed me instantly into a midget. Or a tea-cup. But tea-cups don’t have hands, so the ‘writing’ part of the opening becomes problematic in this instance also. Perhaps the beam allows me special new skills, such as the ability to project an image across the room onto a piece of paper or onto an interactive whiteboard using purely the power of thought. That could be cool.

(Image by haidi2002 from Pixabay)

Of course, there’s level three where I might not actually be me. I could be someone else. Or something else. That raises even more mind-boggling options. I could be a cockroach in search of a tasty morsel left dangling on a dirty dinner plate. If so, I am not only intelligent, but extremely skillful and I have access to miniature writing implements, unless I intend to cocky-poo my message on the illicit bacon rind which should be residing in the bin.

I could be the mouse that I once clobbered with a rolling pin and then drowned in the kitchen sink. (Ick! Disgusting, right?) I doubt that in the midst of all that violence, with the threat of imminent death looming, I would have the presence of mind to write, not even my last will and testament. Hmm … Imagine that –

‘To my darling great-great-grand-nephew, Horatio Mousling, I hereby bequeath my summer nest in the pile of left-over roofing insulation in the rear right-hand corner of the Brown’s garage. To my cousin, Katrina Ratspring, I leave the directions to the dog-bowl at 57 Evinrude Avenue, St. Kilda …’

Sadly, given my current predicament, the creative juices just aren’t flowing as swiftly as they should. Perhaps I should play it safe, and punctuate. Therefore:

I write this. Sitting in the kitchen sink are the questionably salubrious leftovers of my husband’s first adventurous exploration into the world of gastronomic creation. I have to say, for a first effort, the dinner didn’t taste too bad. Even the after-taste was reasonable. After the third and fourth regurgitations however, I have begun to suspect that something was not altogether kosher.

I would rise from my chair at the kitchen table and call an ambulance, but the slightest movement results in another violent altercation with my digestive system. Thus I write this, just in case I don’t survive, so that any investigation of my demise will be straightforward.

I write this so you will know there was absolutely no ill or harm present in my husband’s intent. He’s just never tried to cook anything more adventurous than a fried egg before! 

As for the lengthy verbosity of my report, I simply offer, in my defence, that I never do my best writing when I’m throwing up.

© Mazzy Adams

Mazzy Adams is a published author of poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction. She has a passion for words, pictures and the positive potential in people.

Website: www.mazzyadams.com 

Email: maz@mazzyadams.com