Writing Challenges: Part III of III Discouragement as a Creativity Problem

Writing Challenges: Part III of III

read part one HERE

And part two HERE

Discouragement. Yes. As a writer, you will inevitably encounter it — and in many different shades. There’s the gray of rejection, the gunmetal of disappointing book sales, the long shadow of thoughtless reviews, the steely cold of unfortunate timing, the utter darkness of lost hope.

All of these manifestations can feel as if they completely drain you of your creativity. You can feel worn, wrung out, empty. But that doesn’t have to be true.

The creative force in its natural state is irrepressible, and you can work around the deadening effects of discouragement. As with so many things, the remedy is within the thing itself. Creative work can be the antidote to creative melancholy.

As one who is susceptible to that darkness but also a vigorous champion of picking oneself up and brushing oneself off and fighting on, I ask you to try the following prescription.

Embrace the suck. I encourage you to allow the dark feeling to carry you in its swell — for a moment. Why? Because stamping your feelings down acts as a universal suppressant. It reduces the range and intensity of your emotional life. And for creative work, you want access to the fullest possible spectrum. So once you’ve let yourself wallow for a moment, take a deep breath and pull yourself upright and reaffirm your deepest creativity with the simple progression that follows.

This exercise has endless permutations. I think it’s my variation of something I learned long ago from Andre Dubus III, and it has never failed me. Keep it nearby and use it again and again, whenever you need help, whenever discouragement causes a creative drought.

Start here: Work through the following steps, allowing your mind to fill the spaces. Cease all judgment, and simply let the ideas and images flow from you to the page.

1. Pick a random number between 1 and 26.
2. Exchange that number for the corresponding letter of the alphabet. For example, 11 = K.
3. Choose a random word that starts with that letter.
4. Pick another random number between 1 and 26.
5. Exchange the number for the corresponding letter.
6. Choose another random word beginning with that letter.
7. These two words together are the name of a fictional location.
8. Allowing the sounds and meanings of the words to inform you, create six sentences of precise description for this location.

Next: Quickly sketch a character who is in the location but does not want to be there. You don’t have to explain everything, but you can give hints. This person will be your POV character. Decide what this person DOES want: one simple thing that must be attained. Place a time limit on the goal. Write four paragraphs of the POV character’s first attempt to move through the location and toward the desire.

Follow with this: Create a dynamic non-POV character who either loves/hates or hates/loves your POV character. Place the two characters in an encounter. Write quickly, sloppily, as time runs out for the POV character.

You have created something. You have defied discouragement. Keep going.

Without critiquing the passage you wrote, start again from the POV sketch, but reverse the characters. The lover/hater becomes your POV character with the ticking clock, and the person who doesn’t want to be there is your non-POV character. Write freely until time runs out for one or both of them.

Now put that piece aside and start fresh from Step 1 to create a new location, new characters, new desires, and another countdown. 

I recommend doing the exercise above for several days in succession. Without criticism, accumulate a number of scenes. As you work, put each one aside, like a piece of fruit left on a windowsill to ripen. If you feel inclined to put two of the scenes together, go ahead and try it. Let your mind work on the pieces subliminally and give it some freedom. When additions occur to you, faithfully write them down. As the days pass, one or more of the scenes will captivate you. The people in them will take on detail and interestingness. Help them along by deepening their problems and sharpening their desires and intentions.

Your mind will feel warm with possibilities now. You could do another draft from the first way, or you could do it another way, but either way, you have created something. Discouragement will come and go, but the ability to create new stories endures. It is the way the human mind works when it is unencumbered; it is the process of making sense of chaos; it is the material of dreams.

If you feel discouraged, know that we’re all right there with you. You’re likely to feel alone; but all of us walk that road. And I believe that when melancholy afflicts you, it is the work that is the cure.

—

Award-winner Catherine Wallace Hope grew up in Colorado, the setting for her thriller Once Again. She earned her degree in creative writing at the University of Colorado. She also delved into dance in New York and art and psychology in California. When she returned to Colorado, she became an instructor at the renowned Lighthouse Writers Workshop, offering creativity workshops for writers. Currently, she and her family are living on an island in the Pacific Northwest where they serve at the pleasure of two astonishingly spoiled dogs.

 You can find more at catherinewallacehope.com.

ONCE AGAIN

An imaginative, emotional debut novel for fans of Ann Patchett about one woman’s fight to save her daughter from repeating a deadly fate.

What if you had one chance to save someone you lost?

Isolated in the aftermath of tragedy, Erin Fullarton has felt barely alive since the loss of her young daughter, Korrie. She tries to mark the milestones her therapist suggests–like today, the 500th day without Korrie–but moving through grief is like swimming against a dark current.

Her estranged husband, Zac, a brilliant astrophysicist, seems to be coping better. Lost in his work, he’s perfecting his model of a stunning cosmological phenomenon, one he predicts will occur today–an event so rare, it keeps him from being able to acknowledge Erin’s coinciding milestone.

But when Erin receives a phone call from her daughter’s school, the same call she received five hundred days earlier when Korrie was still alive, Erin realizes something is happening. Or happening again. Struggling to understand the sudden shifts in time, she pieces together that the phenomenon Zac is tracking may have presented her with the gift of a lifetime: the chance to save her daughter.

Unable to reach Zac or convince the authorities of what is happening, Erin is forced to find the answer on her own, Erin must battle to keep the past from repeating–or risk losing her daughter for good.

BUY HERE

 

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: How To and Tips