***I have a number of writing
deadlines coming up over the next couple of months so I have decided
instead of stepping away from my blog completely to concentrate solely
on my writing, I will bring back an encore performance of my WRITERLY
WISDOM series from three years ago. WW is 52 glorious posts by authors,
agents, and editors from around the country providing writerly wisdom in
categories from why even become a writer all the way to how to publish
and market your books.
There
will be two posts loaded per week...Mondays & Wednesdays...so be
sure to stop by and check out all the encouraging information given by
my lovely writerly friends! I hope you enjoy the encore presentation of
my WRITERLY WISDOM series and I will return with shiny, new posts in the
fall!***
What’s Wine Got to Do with It!
By Richa Jha
Our writings make fascinating journeys. Sometimes, the
transformation from how they began to what they end up could be as stark as an
awkward frogling metamorphosing into a preened capuchin! I see this journey as
a sum of parts, where each phase is crucial to getting a finely sculpted piece
of work out there.
The Pitcher Plant (or the good ol’ notepad phase): Have you
observed the effortlessness with which a Pitcher Plant traps its prey? It’s a
quick, snappy, and decisive movement, regardless of the type of insect that
lands on its outer lobes. Moreover, the plant doesn’t go looking for its prey;
it is they who come to it. That’s how I see the mind of a writer operating, be
it when writing an article for a magazine, a short story, a picture book or a
novel. Ideas rarely come to you when you go looking too hard; if they do, they
feel contrived, or lacking in freshness and spontaneity. But they do strike
you, unannounced, if you keep your senses open to the possibility of ideas.
Generating them is more of a sensory exercise – a smell triggers a chain of
thought, a sound shouts out more than you can hear, a sight brings back
memories and reflections, or a story or a conversation throws open the fifty
other ways to reframe that thought. Ideas are everywhere, as long as we keep
our tentacles upped! You see a possibility, just seize it, grab it, trap it.
Never mind that you may not need it now, or ever, but make it yours before it
slips away.
And that’s where a trusty notepad comes in handy (or should
I say it is an imperative?) But I have learnt it the hard way that it’s never
been with me when I’ve needed it for the teeny weeny fraction of a second when
for example, the first little rascal said something to the second little rascal.
By the time I got to the tools of the trade, the moment had passed, the muse
had decided to disperse and the words lay forgotten.
What does stick with me like my shadow, however, is my smart
phone, which I have now begun putting to good use. I type out these sudden
bursts of inspiration into my email (that is, compose an email to myself) –
sometimes key words or ideas, or sometimes the first flow of sentences that
come to mind. There have been times when I have even typed out a full first
draft on them while waiting at my kids’ soccer lesson or the doctor’s lounge or
wherever. Once home, I just need to cut and paste this matter from my email
onto my laptop, and there, one part of my work is already done!
The Cauldron (or the hard work phase): The first part is
always the easiest, of course. But once all kinds of fuzzy, inchoate, bizarre,
outlandish, nutty or earth shattering ideas have been trapped into my system,
comes the part where I let them gestate. Or slow cook. That’s why I call it my
cauldron phase. This is where those thoughts brew and stew, and I let them be
because I know they are not ready yet to be shaped into a ripe story. Or, if I
am reasonably sure about a beginning, I start writing them down, without
suppressing any of the strains of thoughts that the one main idea sprouts. And
then I write like a maniac!
For me typically, this could last anywhere between a couple
of months to a year for fiction (much less for literary pieces and magazine
articles, though). It’s an interesting phase, because at any given time, there
are at least five different story ideas that are cooking up in my mind, each
teasing and tearing me in fifty different directions! I have found that I am at
my most irritable, scatter-brained and snappiest worst when my mind’s a boiling
cauldron. Which is pretty much all the time :)
Wine Barrel (or the grind ending-mill phase): Any writing
needs time and space to grow, to mature. Care for unaged wine, any one?
A hurriedly written story will fail the test of time because
the author will not have given adequate thought to the several possible ways in
which the story could lead to its best possible resolution. By far the most
important (and difficult) part of a picture book’s journey, for instance,
happens in this phase. When I have written out several drafts of a story (I
average at 20), I (invariably) get stuck with the ending of my best draft.
Also, as an editor, I have found that most picture books that begin with a
flourish and oodles of potential peter out into a flat whimper by the end.
There is a difference in the way churning happens in the
cauldron and inside the wine barrel. Unlike in the cauldron where your mind is
open to infinite possibilities of which way the characters can move, talk,
behave, act, or fail and then succeed, by the time your story has been locked
inside the barrel, its contents are sealed, the ingredients are already decided
and pre-mixed - right down to pinning your character to the meanest possible
problem. You are then left with the unenviable challenge of getting the best
resolution of the crisis for that particular character. That’s how wine ages
too. And that comes only with time.
Let the conflict play on in your mind for days, months, even
years, until you feel you’ve hit upon the best twist you can give to your
story’s end. If it means going right back to tweak the beginning, do so. You’ll
feel it in your gut the moment all the pieces of the jigsaw fit it perfectly!
Kudos! Make way for the wine taster now, please!
It’s hardly a smooth sail, this writing journey. But easy
treks, much like the low hanging fruits, are never half as fulfilling as one
that has weathered you inside out. By the end of any piece of writing, if you
feel you have grown and gained, you’ve got a winner in your hand. And it’s
worth every bit of those sleepless star-gazing nights during the adventure
trail.
Richa Jha is a writer based out of Lagos, Nigeria.
She is the author of a picture book and editor of an anthology of short
stories. Two of her picture books are slated for release later this year
in India. When not stirring the stew in the cauldron, she can be found
snuggled with picture books or talking about them at http://snugglewithpicturebooks.com/ and http://www.facebook.com/snugglewithpicturebooks
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