Tuesday's Inspiration - The Writer's Mind

This will be the last post listing some of the things that make a writer's mind. From John Gardner, "an inexplicable and incurable addiction to stories. written or oral, bad or good."

I've always been fascinated with stories and I'm sure the rest of you are also. The stories that strike me hard are ones I read and re-read. Not sure why. Then there are the stories that make me mad. Maybe the idea is good but the execution isn't. Now I read books for contests, sometimes whole books and sometimes just parts. When the story is good, I may feel a touch of envy but I continue reading and enjoying. Then there are those bad stories. I struggle to read them. I find myself trying to make them better, at least in my head.

Another quote from On Becoming A Novelist. "Writers would clearly be madmen if they weren't so psychologically complicated to settle on any given madness." Amusing yet probably true. People give odd looks when a group of writers is talking about how the people in their stories take charge, talk to them and seem to be as real to the author as the people in their lives. Face it, I once read "There is a thin line between genius and madness." I firmly believe writers walk this edge every time they write a story.

So don't be upset when people look at you strangely when they think you are talking to yourself. You're not, you're conversing with the characters you write.

Tuesday's Inspiration - More Tidbits on The Writer's Mind

Do you have both a shameless playfulness and earnestness that can be embarrassing. Both are found in the writer's mind. Don't know about you but sometimes lines occur when I'm writing and become part of the story that are sort of twisted but funny. Rather irreverent remarks the characters say that you never would in conversation.

Another quality a writer's mind can display is patience. The kind of patience as you would find when a cat sits for hours and watches waiting to pounce. Spending time waiting for the right expression. I know I've sat with pen in hand thinking and thinking and suddenly the right words form and they move across the page. This I find hard to do on the computer but sitting in my recliner I can spend this thoughtful time until I pounce.

This one is one I cultivate and that's a criminal streak of cunning. Very necessary if one writes mysteries and suspense but also useful in other genres of fiction.  How to take the same old story and make it new takes this kind of cunning. Have you ever been reading another writer's work and thought to yourself, "that's not the wy things should work." then your writer's mind takes and twists that idea and makes it your own. Of course there is danger in this but the cunning mind will find a way to make that idea yours.

Tuesday's Writer's Inspiration - The Writer's Mind

When I read this segment of On Becoming A Novelist by John Gardner, I laughed. I'll put in just a few of the things he said about the elements that make a writer partway between madness and sanity.
I also had a friend who was a psychologist do a test on me and then analyze it. He came to the conclusion that I was both sane and mad at the same time. We laughed a lot about the results of the test.

So here goes, "The writer's intelligence is partly natural and partly trained composed of several qualities, in normal people are signs of immaturity or incivility." There is a long list of qualities that writers often possess. Now you don't have to have them all but you may recognize a few of them. In the next few weeks I'll try to hit most of them. Hope they make you feel amused and realize you have most or all of them.

"Wit - a tendency to make irreverent connections." Perhaps you have this quality and realize that in your head 2 and 2 do not make 4 but make a variety of scenarios that make your reader want to read more. If one were to take four people and put them together, think of the strange possibilities for a story you could find. Another variation is 1 plus 1 plus one. Imagine the many kinds of triangles you can find.

Stubbornness. How many times do you hear that just won't work but by casting words on paper, you find a way. That scene doesn't work, so you tear it apart and try again. To be a writer you have to be stubborn to the max.

There are many more so until next week think about these qualities and see how many you possess or can train yourself to have so you will delight, horrify, mystify and let your readers see all the facets of human nature no matter what way your stories turn.