Man, you should be a writer!

There has been a conspicuous lack of mention of creative writing for a while, with good reason – there hasn’t been any to speak of. I’ve had to deal with some work related messiness that has forced me to focus my thoughts and energies away from writing and towards journalism. Initially, I was sort of sad about this, as I felt some of the enthusiasm and drive I came back from the States with ebbing away, but actually this turn of events hasn’t been as harmful as I thought it would be.

I’ve been generating journalistic story ideas to beat the band and talking to newspapers in the UK and Ireland and it’s actually gone quite well. More significantly, I’m realising that creativity is a bit like a muscle – the more you use it the stronger it gets. If you don’t use it, it atrophies, but generating ideas the way I have been is actually not dissimilar to the kind of creativity required to write creatively.

During bootcamp (which seems like several years ago now, but was actually only last month!) Orson Scott Card did this . . . thing.

We sat around the table and critiqued each other’s stories and when everyone had had a go, he gave his summary and then came the magic words . . . “but what you could have done is . . . “ Without exception, each of his plot and character suggestions were just jaw droppingly good, in the sense that they were all of the “that’s brilliant, why the hell didn’t I think of that!” family.

After the fifth or sixth time he did that, I got a laugh from the class by saying out loud “Man, you should be a writer, you’re really good at this!” But actually I got it the wrong way around – he’s really good at it, because he is a writer. He’s been working with character and viewpoint for what, 30 years? That’s the currency he trades in, and his experience shows. It’s actually sort of reassuring – you should be very good at anything you actually put your mind to doing for that length of time. So in one sense, all is right with the world.

Anyway, in real writing news, my bootcamp story, “The Brand New Suit” is up to 5,500 words and is nearly done. It should top out at around 7,000 words. It’s been both a pleasure and a pain – on one hand, it’s not bad, on the other, from this end of the writing process, I can see where I messed up, and fixing it feels a little like swimming through treacle.

On the other hand, I actually can’t wait to be rid of it and free to start on something new. I’m tempted to just drop it and go from scratch, but I can’t bear the idea of leaving it part-done. Anyway, the point of this blog entry is to write about how I’ve found myself brimming over with good story ideas, but hanging in the background is the historical fantasy trilogy monolith, The Middling Saga. The first page of that got me into bootcamp, but . . . maybe that’s for another blog entry.