Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Tactical Writing

Tactical Writing

I do not consider myself a particularly talented writer. Yesterday I was looking at the process by which I write and it has evolved quite a bit since I have been at WDC. Sometimes I just get an idea and write it from beginning to end. If the vignette is less than 5K words I just “Do it.” What I wind up with is whatever popped into my mind to begin with and when I finish it is pretty rigid, although I can tweak it on the margin. Then I go back over it a half dozen to a dozen times to get the resonance right.

As I have been teaching the Exploratory Writing Course I have found my vignette process changing. Now I like to think about an idea a bit more before writing about it. In this latest one I have Rindar talking with the Great Spirit in poetry, like a chant, like something a rapper might do. I am told that the verbal histories of primitive peoples are written like this and have a beat that makes them easier to remember so there is that aspect of the vignette. Then there is the question of what “thoughts” must sound like and I am exploring what this primitive man’s prayers might have been like.

For the body of the vignette part I am using some old material as source… material that wasn’t going anywhere and trying to rekindle the old ideas and get them to smoldering anew by adding some new tinder and organization. What happens is that I read the old vignette, and add some new structure and thoughts. Once I have the idea for the “chunk” I outline it before trying to write the short story sized piece. From the outline I then write a synopsis and from the synopsis the final piece. Now I realize this sounds like a lot of bother for something I just fire hosed in the past... However what I was doing before was the Adidas Approach and now I am finding that some structure and development allows for the management of greater complexity and work that sounds more effortless and free flowing ...like we do in life, flirting from thought to thought and then through some process weaving them together into a richer tapestry. In this process there is structure to hold the ideas and thoughts allowing me to suspend them without fear of them floating off and dealing with them in a bigger window.... in more leisurely fashion.

I am considering showing the process in some of the blogs coming down the road just to demonstrate a process that goes beyond pushing the noodle. No Wonder so many writers suffer from writer’s block. I can honestly say this has never been my problem. Idea#1+Idea#2+idea#3 = Paragraph. Paragraph #1 + Paragraph#2+Paragraph#3= Vignette. Adding in outline and synopsis = a 2 dimensional structure with a quadrant of ideas instead of just a sting. This is doable in a normal human mind. Finally is the possibility of adding the dramatic ingredients to the soup, suspending them in a three dimensional orb. Great writers seem to do this in a mysterious and incomprehensible manner but I’m beginning to think that with a little structure the essence can be achieved, even by a bone head like me.