From My Mind to....

Writing ...

About four or five years ago--dang time flies when you're having fun--when I started to get serious about my writing, I started buying books.  You know, the How-To kind to tell me how to write, and what to write, and who to write for, and ... well, you get the picture.

Many of you know I'm a woodworker by trade.  These books--four or five years worth--line the shelves of the bookcases I've had to build to house them.  Are you like that?  Buying books to tell you how to write, instead of just writing?

Recently, at the behest of a good friend (thanks Shannon), I attended a Writer's Conference.  Actually it was six weeks ago.  In these six weeks, I've written more stories, blogs and poems than I wrote in the past six months.  My point:  Stop reading about it and start writing it.

That said, one should not stop trying to learn better ways to perfect your chosen craft.  My current nonfiction of choice is a book by Jerry Cleaver called Immediate Fiction:  A Complete Writing Course.  Like most folk, I bounce around the book, picking out those parts that interest me at the moment. 

In his chapter on "Showing," Cleaver says "ideas are telling, life (experience) is showing."  Never really thought about that much.  But one little nugget hit me like Relevations to John.  I'll tell it in Cleaver's words (I added the emphasis}:  "You can lapse into telling with anything and everything, even description. ... And it's perfectly all right in early drafts when you're working to get the basic story down.  In fact, if you have a sense of what you need to do, but you're not up to it, telling is your shorthand that lets you put something on the page so that you can move forward and not get bogged down.  You do multiple drafts.  One time you're good at one thing, another time at something else.  Bit by bit, you get it all up to where it needs to be."

How many of you edit as you write?  I do ... or I did.  Lately I've been trying not to do that.  That paragraph really gives me license to NOT edit.

Okay--different subject.  I mentioned I was a woodworker.  I wanted to share a small project of which I'm very proud.  I've built many bookcase systems ... but this is my first with a rolling ladder.  I've always wanted to do one.

By the way, the clients have a small organ that fits in that opening at the bottom.

Y'all have a good weekend.