A little different column today.  Today you get to peer into my life a bit more.
You get to see what makes this writer tick.

Start small. If you try to think about all of it at once—-the world you hope to capture on the page, everything you know…
…you’ll be overcome by paralysis.

Still Writing
Dani Shapiro
Page 15-16

Uncanny:

Picked this book up at the library last week as it made its way back through the bookdrop.  Having been a writer all my life, I’m always fascinated by what makes writers tick.  As I read this book I feel connected with so much of what the author says.  I felt a deep connection to the passage above as I rarely knew where my fiction traveled when I wrote short stories.  I sat at my computer’s keyboard and simply started placing words on the screen.  Most of the time I never knew how the story would conclude.  That may seem odd to some of you, however it’s how I worked.

As another passage suggested:
There was a woman I know (Dani that is) who only wrote at night as she had children who needed her attention during the day. (A paraphrase here.)

Growing up as teenager, that became my schedule as well.  Typically, after dinner, I would disappear into my room and into my created worlds of fiction.  I wrote best from around seven to eleven PM. I’ve talked here at Wisdom and Life before about being in the flow.  I can’t tell you how many times I’d start writing at my scheduled time and time would simply melt away.  Next thing I knew I’d look up and two hours would have gone by.  Looking back at my screen in front of me there would be word after word and sentence after sentence filling the once blank screen.  Amazing that was, the first time it occurred.  I’m no longer writing fiction.

Having lost interest in that world, I now produce three blogs.  So to coin a phrase, I’m still writing.

Writers write:

correct?  I believe I produce more content now that I’m in the blog world than I ever did when I wrote fiction.  Writers lead a solitary life and many of the writers who I call close friends share a common trait:
We’re ALL introverts and a great many of us are right brained.

If I didn’t have this gift,
If I didn’t write from an early age and even now,
I don’t want to consider where my life would be at the moment.  As with Dani Shapiro, “Writing saved my life.”  It became my release.  Writing, pounding on that keypad every night helped me pound out the stress in my life as a teenager.

I’ve been writing for so long now that its become the source of my life, as much as breathing is the source of my life. Stop one and I may as well stop living.  Writers write!  Humans breathe.  All one in the same for me.

Start small:

Excellent advice.  Put one word on the screen then another and another.  Pretty soon your screen will be filled with words.

Listening to the voices:

This is why I rarely knew where my stories would go.  I simply followed my intuition.  I let the voices in my head guide me. My characters basically guided me.  They knew better than I where they needed to go.  I certainly don’t recommend following that rule.  It worked for me.  And I’m convinced listening to their voices had a direct impact on my writing today, especially writing Wisdom and Life.  Were it not for my ability to give control over to my characters, opening my mind, letting my characters influence me, I sincerely doubt my divine pipeline would be as clear, as open as it is today.  Giving my characters free reign definitely helped me now.

Writing has always been my release.  Dani Shapiro said writing saved her life.  I have to agree.  She also says that writing keeps her centered and when she goes away from it, her stress level rises, things that generally don’t bother her become huge challenges.  I can relate to this too because I feel the same way.  I always have.  When I spend time writing, my life is easy, I’m more joyful.  A writer writes and when THIS writer doesn’t write?

Well look out!

Because you don’t know when NOT if he will blow.
Do you want to know what makes writers tick?  Pick up Still Writing.
This is a book that everyone who is a writer or who is friends with writer should read.

Be Happy!  Be Well!  Be Positive!
Blessings to you.
—
Chris

Once you realize that life is eternal,
That our souls our eternal,
That we return to light and physical over and over; 

We then lose all our distress
We then lose all our fear of dying.  For there truly is no end.