When the well is dry, a story’s creation is akin to hoping for the ride that already left. Or perhaps you’ve experienced the pickle of needing advice while devoid of the questions to ask. Though it’s not your case today, it’s how we feel, when the well is dry.
The Problem
The challenge of a story demanding perspective, a passion, or sleight, isn’t the lack of a story but the impetus to write it. So, we begin:
Uups…the occasional block! The story is null, except for a title. A word of advice, to get you started! Fortuitous, for the title, we wrote a word. And fab for the story — the story took form! Many have done this dance or danced just like it. One of a myriad of ways we prime the well.
And not to make light of the block, for heaven’s sake, when the story is neither conceived nor given a name. It’s a hopeful blob, to borrow from the world of coders. IT, for all intents and purposes, is non-existence. Anti-matter, devoid of form, a black hole. We grope for a morsel, premature to even mention or adorn with a pronoun, save for a title.
Creating from Writer’s Block
Like baking bread devoid of flour of any type: chickpea, rice, almond (Eeesh!) is NOT baking bread. Should a writer be doing this? Write without?
What should you do when the well is dry? Wait til tomorrow? Sleep on it. Or sleep on the absence of it. I’ve done this, as a writer and Javascript coder. And sure as tootin! An idea or solution, so the writer scripts at 2 AM. But this is best solution?
Writer’s block comes without warning, apologies, or explanation. But it assaults a writer at least with some fortuitous guidance: Create it. Terrific. A command to just simply start. No, there’s more! Write a title, a paragraph, and 50 words about anything. One writer on Medium delivered a hilarious story about her refrigerator who talked back to her, a fabulous work. Utterly brilliant creation! Did she plan this? Probably not. Likewise, ideas come without warning, but usually from a regimen or work ethic. And I’ve read it from others’ — Asad on ILLUMINATION said it best “We gotta show up!”
That’s the secret to writing.
There is wisdom in the command, “Just Create it.” The command is trusty. Anticipative. A reminder of the brilliance of you. If it weren’t for you we wouldn’t have your story, which is right now in the making! It’s a creation only you can write. We’re anxious to read it. So, don’t doubt, don’t second guess it, and for heaven’s sake, don’t procrastinate. Create! Make the connection and start!
Link Analysis
What is a link analysis and HOW will it rescue me from my literal conundrum?
Well, neurosurgeons allude to it in the workings and design of the human brain. Earl Nightingale mentioned it from wisdom-bearing motivational tapes, the most efficient method for brainstorming naturally accorded to the human mind design. Fraud experts use link analysis to solve the most complex money laundering schemes and perform forensic analysis on fictitious vendor scams.
Yes, but what is it?
Link Analysis — an analysis technique that calculates centrality, degree, betweenness, closeness, and eigenvector. It reveals connections in a dataset and in the mind.
It allows a writer to make or synthesize connections, one word to the next from an otherwise random spray of ideas or nodes on a link map.
Link analysis is brainstorming in lines and nodes. Like spokes from every node are 3 to 5 connected thoughts or words (nodes). And from those 3 to 5 connected thoughts or words. It’s an explosion of ideas that erupts, the natural design of the mind. Don’t tarry, try it!
When a writer is stuck:
1. Write a word center of a blank sheet and circle it — refrigerator. This is a node.
2. From this node, draw 3 to 5 short lines or spokes, like spokes from a wheel hub. Now sip your scotch or tea and write a word at each spoke, that is somehow connected in meaning to the node (refrigerator) — milk, cold, ice, lemon, empty. Now these are nodes.
3. From each of these nodes draw your spokes (3 to 5). And jot a word at a spoke, somehow connected in meaning.
Each node has something to add. Something to say. Draw a line from it and another and write a word or idea that comes to mind. An infinite network of connectivity of nodes, an explosion of ideas. For, this is the human mind in all of it’s created wonder.
So don’t sleep and don’t wait!
From Henry Matisse, likewise:
Don’t wait for inspiration. It comes while working.
I shall pass along what Andy Cooley posts on the storefront of Cooley’s Pizza in Suwanee, Georgia:
Fear: He is a Liar.
Similarly, the statisticians say, “99 percent of what we worry about never happens.” The worry confronting a writer whose mind is devoid of ideas or a start of a story, is repeatedly: One may never arrive. Well, that’s the lie, a fabrication, antithesis of faith.
But Belief is….
A story is a tapestry of YOU.
Trusty Words
Albert Einstein says:
Creativity is seeing what others see and thinking what no one else ever thought.
Interesting words from Einstein. They suggest and remind us of the fact, that you, and you and you are each a unique collection of experiences. Every living being offers a unique perspective, which consists of experiences, intel, truth, or hope that only you possess. It’s there in you, a montage.
Montage (noun) — a production of a new composite whole from fragments, pictures, text, music, and memories of experience.
Give of Your Passions
Yes, it is most certainly easier to write about the things we’re passionate about. But it’s equally easy to write about things you do a lot. It’s easy to write from which you have expertise. No, we didn’t qualify the expertise! That’s the fear again, insinuating you aren’t expert enough, or higher than most, or preceding a three-letter designation.
Okay. If you can’t muster the courage to call your next story “expert advice” then make the story an opinion piece, which again only you are qualified to write. Experiences that only you have bear witness to an expertise that may inform and inspire many others. The whole definition of anecdotal is built around the misguided idea that a one-off personal experience disqualifies one from expertise. Really! And yet Bill Gates and J. K. Rowling are just two among a multitude of great inventors, who experienced their one-off genius first and were relegated to crazy or dismissed!
If a small business, a market trader, a musician, or a consultant can regularly generate profits out of thin air, with little more than belief to start a business, then so will you. They do it with little more than a dream and desire. And hunger.
Yet, who knows hunger best?
“Writing is seeing what others see and thinking what no one else ever thought.” — Charlie Whooph
