Don’t forget to Scribble

Or to keep some pen and paper handy…

I’ve been escaping ‘writing’ for about a decade now. I mean, no I don’t just ‘not write’ anything or stay deathly away from the pen and paper. No, it’s just that I’d been busy pursuing other…great passions of my life.

Don’t worry this one isn’t written to regale you how absolutely amazing it is ‘to follow your heart’ or even a depressing version of ‘oh I didn’t think this through’. Nope, done to death, just strangle me with those cliched shit already are some phrases that come to mind when the topic strains over to either of these areas.

Alright first scary adult word for the day: (Coz why not divert the mind when I can?)

Discourse.

I don’t ever wanna discourse my way around.

Discourse-rs are strange beings.

Discourse is where honest conversation goes to Harakiri itself with a Samurai Sword.

Such an utterly pompous word. Discourse.

Great, diversion done. Onto the real heart of the matter now.

So the bare bones truth is that though I’d figured out early on that I wanted to be a storyteller (How I hate that word, good lord. Though discourse comes a close second) but because floundering around is fun, I am an electronics engineer too if anyone is asking. And over the years, there’d been a few times where ‘THE MUSE’ had grabbed me by my ears and sat me down to write undistilled versions of what I could envision happening behind my eyeballs.

Writing was the one thing in life I took for granted. Even my love for reading fiction dying away didn’t bring about fear of ‘dude…what if I just couldn’t write again tomorrow?’.

So I’m sure you’re seeing where this is going. Another tirade about how the Writer’s Block is a real demon and the rest of the rant on how to overcome it and what not. But the thing is… although, I’m an old hat at judging content (and a damned decent editor if my assignments are anything to go by) I’m a horribly self-conscious newbie writer. And over the last couple months I’ve realized a few gems that could hopefully ease some of y’all into writing what needs be said.

Gem shower starts, gather around folks:

There are exactly 3 people inside you. (No no no not that way, I mean you know what I’m talking about, get your mind out the gutter and focus!). The writer, the editor and the seller.

The writer’s this always-unsure, clingy sort of fellow, who needs to be told what she/he’s writing is just Bard level. ALL THE DAMN TIME.

The editor is the uncompromising asshole, who’s not supposed to let it go unless everything is just bloody perfect. Perfect I tell you!

And the seller, is the fellow who makes the sales pitch, who shows everyone that yes this is THE SHIT, exactly what the world needs to clap its eyes on, and that anyone would be crazy to say otherwise.

Now, shit starts moving towards the fan when the order of any of these 3 people is jumbled. If the seller starts selling before the writer can even think it out. Trouble. If the editor just won’t let the first line go after 5 hours of type, press ‘delete’. Trouble. And if the writer, the artisty nincompoop would keep the other two waiting for some bleeding inspiration to fall out of the sky. Yes…you guessed it.

And don’t even get me started if any of the 3 are too meek to do their thing well. Coz that’s just shit squared.

So YES this happens. Chill it, think it out, find out who’s flunking and get the bugger’s ass to detention.

2. The rest of them are smaller. Stay with me here.

3. Memory is one messed up bitch I’d like to meet in a side-alley with a baseball bat in my hands.

There will be many occasions where you’ll find the perfect idea. The absolutely heaven-inspired characters, or maybe its the plot that’s Titanic in it’s depth. Basically inspiration will strike you whenever it damn well pleases ready or not. And there will be many cases when you’re so engrossed in exploring all the new angles that the enlightened light shows you that you’ll forget to jot it down.

Or you’ll be so consumed with it that your brain will say, naaah no way in hell am I gonna misplace this package boss, you carry on. Big mistake. Not.

Since our brains work their style, and we’re creatures of habit… The trigger that started it all will come again. Trust me.

Stop wracking your brains where it went. Stop looking at the same sticky note trying to decode what you’d meant by that scribble that one drunk night at the coffee shop (Do not judge. Shush).

And most of all. For the love of God stop, STOP worrying you’ll lose the next muse to your ‘unpreparedness’.

4. Now that we’re onto the age old topic of Muse. Lets get on with it.

I’ve seen my stories develop in different ways. There’s the got home one night wanting to really really pee and by the morning I had a tale that pivoted from a nature’s call into something completely different.

There’s the few that fester, we’ll talk about those a bit more later but yes. They fester and they revisit too. Ghost of the Christmas past, was it?

I’ve also seen a few being carefully weaved, each sentence an odious task that I just don’t want to embark upon (and is only being written coz of some unknown deadline). For I know all the scenes already, there’s nothing new that I could be surprised from. Or well…that’s what I believed.

And the last kind, ones you’re shit scared you’ll mess up. And just the ones which never meet the editor’s cut for some reason.

After quite a bit of hand-wringing, table banging and just general inky-pinky-ponky I’ve come to realize, I have no clue which one is the muse come alive.

It may seem like an easy pick, the most spontaneous one but of course. But, it’s not all that simple. I’m not saying all of them are a result of some flash of brain-lightening or that none of them are. I’m just saying it’s a question, which according to me, still open for discourse.

5. Yeah, the gems are not getting any shorter. Well… at least you’re reading this.

6. Things come together. People come together. This whole world is one giant Ouroboros and everything falls in place. Eventually. So will your characters.

There are times, I just love a real-life scene playing out right in front of my eyes. Some slice-of-life shit, some painful separation, something that can be just put directly on paper and posted in mail to your publishers. And sometimes these scenes, these characters are firm enough that the story can build upon their shoulders and stand the weight of the world’s censure, no problem. But sometimes, actually, often,you’d look at something and say, damn that’ll be lovely to put down on paper or even on some photo paper. But it’s not enough. It fizzles down. The foundation needs more.

Which is okay. Coz if you remember, memory, THAT bitch! She’ll figure out a way to prompt you just when you’re knee-deep in another piece. The thing you need to remember here is, give it a chance. Try the combination. By no means does it mean to throw away the earlier one onto the side and start with renewed zest for this older bit. But maybe not go sullen, thinking that bit is just another example of why my ideas don’t work. And the rest of the blah-titude… As it happens to me every time I get my eyesight checked, the dude adds up another lens on the try-on lens he’s already got me squinting from.

Just to be sure… that there’s not a better fit available after all.

So finally what I’m saying is… give a break to the writer-you or… I mean not, if you look at it from the editor’s eyes, or just get everyone to start talking about your idea…

I need a discourse.

No.

No, I need a Disprin (sort of an aspirin). Dash it all, I’m going back to my stories.