In my 10,000 hour long pursuit of learning to write well, I’m up to hour 2377.
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When I’m in the groove, I realize that writing is intentional day dreaming. When there is flow, when the setting and characters are vivid in my imagination and I’m immersed in their story, it’s like being there with them. Day dreaming.
I love me the hell out of nighttime dreams. For whatever reason, my brain treats me to some far-out fantastical adventures in places and with people (and creatures) I regret abandoning when consciousness returns. Oh please, let me drift back to that dream state… Yeozzer, what a righteous tart she was. And that bi-plane flight, wicked! And that buffet on the space station…
Because real life sucks the hind tit covered with shit, the next best thing, consciously speaking, is writing—in the groove—being there in my day dream imagination. Of course, it’s not all licorice, smoked oysters and dark ale. Flow-state is often hard to come by. But lately, as I’m writing these SepSceneWriMo episodes, I’ve been able to slip-stream and enjoy wide-eyed fantasies.
Is writing like that for you guys? But don’t just comment. Write a favorite scene and share it, now or later…
Anonymole - apocryphal agitators 
So many sides to writing…but I love when the story practically writes itself. This is from my dream last night. “They said she was in San Antonio, but no matter where I looked, I couldn’t find her. We looked in the doctor’s office. They didn’t know who I was talking about. We went to someone’s house I didn’t know. We stopped at a cafe to eat. They knew who I was talking about. She was a regular, they said. That gave me hope. They didn’t know when she’d be back though. I sat and waited with my husband. He told me it was going to be fine. We’d find her. I needed to speak with her. It was important. Someone from the cafe handed me a cellphone. She was on the line. I sobbed hearing the sound of her voice again. ‘Mom,’ I cried…just before the phone went dead. I woke up.”
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Thanks for sharing.
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I love when I’m in “flow state.” I often write about myself in a coffee shop, except I’m not the main character. I’m the silent observer. I watch other people at other tables look at their loved ones with an unexplainable amount of love. I watch waitresses and waiters switch shifts; some weighed down by the awful hours and others energised from the interactions they had with entertaining customers. I smell the coffee (but really it’s tea). I’m unapologetically taking up space. I have one job: just to be present. I’m not expected to participate and I smile at those who do.
Thank you for giving me a space to go into my “flow state.” I hope all is well with you. Take care.
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With my back straight, and my legs at a 90-degree angle, I feel ready to browse through some of the recently published posts of my blogging buddies. The AC turns on and the flower petals tremble, prompting me to shiver. I’m not the biggest fan of the cold. The gentle sun sneaks into the room through the blinds, as if in a search of a cooler climate.
Daydreaming…
I don’t really dream at night (or I don’t remember any of it), so I can only dream during the day. Yes, writing, at its best is exactly like that for me, too.
“licorice, smoked oysters and dark ale”? ewwww
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I’ve always been a very vivid dreamer–in fact, I started writing The Dome after a dream I had, and some of my short stories are inspired by dreams. I’m very visual, so daydreaming is important for me too, to play it out in my mind like a film, then write about what I’m seeing. Some days, I’d rather be asleep:-)
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Hear, hear!
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It’s transporting, to say the least.
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Let me escape, elope in my mind to some tropical paradise.
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Seems like a safe enough haven to me.
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The thing about single scenes is they don’t have to connect logically to anything. Right now I’m beating out what is in effect the second draft, but because I decided to change some important details after finishing the handwritten first draft, it isn’t just a matter of “typing it up.” All those scenes have to make sense, taken together.
Dreams, on the other hand, often make no sense at all when you think about them the next day.
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Nighttime dreams are wild ride, but yeah, what the hell was that? Bizarre. Day Dream Believer, and a…
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For me it’s mostly an escape valve
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It’s like the old fashioned (educated) way of poetry. Knowing what excesses to whack. It comes down to words without meaning. The, and, any adverb, that, then, when. I’ve been going through some older work appalled by all the “was doing” passivity. Forest for the trees. Read some Byron or Wordsworth, Blake. BAM, no bullshit. I learned more about opening a scene from this line than any book –
I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs,
A palace and a prison on each hand:
None of that “I was standing…” business.
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I don’t get a “flow state” often enough (in any activity) to depend on it, so I tend to make myself show up to work and squirm around in my seat until something happens. Writing is sort of like dreaming for me, except it’s in the remembering of the dream. I can see what I want in my imagination, but I can’t quite grasp at it or find the right words. But when I find it and time is flying, I’m quite happy.
I have started the SepSceneWriMo project. I have an idea of what I want to do and so far I’ve been doing it. As long as I don’t lose momentum and crap out, I should be okay. I’m excited about it. A rare phenomenon btw.
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We’re making movies in our minds. Here we come Hollywood, or Bollywood, more likely, Follywood, but I’d settle for Jollywood.
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Hi A. Mole,
“I love me the hell out of nighttime dreams.” Who can take issues with that? Learning to write … yes, learning to write is the stream and the stream water flows over the bed. It’s the bed that creates the style. The stream bed angle causes the water to flow and dip, circulate, hesitate, white water here and there, fuck the damn, spill over it and on down to the sea. Whatever happened to Bruce Cockburn? I sort of put him in the same class as Woody Guthrie, except I don’t know that BCockburn every much lacked for anything. Still, he had a POV, privileged though it might have been. Too bad that even when the “people” win, it always comes back to dictatorship and pain. It’s the hardwire problem with men. Women are so much better on that score. Duke
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Godawmightydamn. You count them? There is a fine line between playing Barbie and Ken (figuratively) with a word processor and letting a story happen, the difference being self insertion. But yes, that’s it. However, and why I became an addicted and eventually competent electronic musician was synthesizers did the same thing for me. Spacey, frenetic, atonal, absurd, sound design – I said my synths will take me where nothing else will. So when I “write” I go “there” and “they” talk to me and I’m in it.
Already writing sep scene, eh? So where is the spontaneity in that?
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I estimate them, the hours. But I’m pretty close, mas o menos 5% I say.
If I had time to write for 30 days straight, I’d wait. I’ll be happy if I get 20 of the total done by October 1st, even writing half of them in August.
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I think brevity is the key to these sorts of undertakings.
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I look forward to your brief interludes.
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The shorter they are, the harder they are to write. Wasn’t that Mark Twain? An hour to write 500 words, two to write 250…
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“I write novels because I not good enough to write poetry.” Some sage, not me.
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