So how/why did you start writing?

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sasha
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So how/why did you start writing?

Post by sasha » June 13th, 2018, 2:47 pm


 
For me it started when I was around 10. I always loved sci-fi (or what passed for it in the 1950s), so I penned my first complete opus in that genre, a sweeping tale of cosmic horror entitled "Space Monster". (It was preceded by an unfinished fragment from a few years earlier, with the working title "The Monster from Nebula".) Both were written in pencil and covered both sides of a single sheet of 7"x8" lined spiral-bound paper, but "Space Monster" alone managed to cram every space-opera cliche' into 174 words that included "petrified", "paralo-ray", and "expholt" (the name of the creature I inexplicably felt needed killing).

(It was so hilariously awful that a few decades later my brother and I, in a cannabis/alcohol fueled burst of inspiration, recorded it on mag tape, complete with sound effects, a music track, and an inspired ad-lib. I'd sell a kidney to find that tape.)

I continued writing through middle school, emulating (i.e., plundering) the claptrap I was reading or watching on the tellie. "Brain Wave" (version 4 posted below somewhere) started out as a shameless ripoff of the Outer Limits episode "The Sixth Finger", with flavor notes of "The Borderland" and some random spy stuff gratuitously thrown in. I dialed it back in Version 2, and got it published in the high school literary magazine, though it was still crap.

My SAT scores exempted me from the requirement that all college freshmen take a basic English course, so I enrolled in a junior-level fiction workshop instead. Wasn't I a badass! In fact I was so bad the prof read my 1st offering aloud to the class - as a canonical example of how NOT to write. He always read submissions anonymously - even the good ones - but anyone who chanced to turn around would have seen a red-faced frosh cringing in the back row.

Still, it was an important lesson.

Write what you know. (What the hell do I really know about polar exploration?) Tell the Truth. Create believable characters. Descriptive details - not too many, but just the right ones. Imagery - simile, metaphor, allegory - should be in the toolbox. Don't overdo it. (Much of my middle work is colored a deep shade of purple, no doubt the influence of one of my literary idols, the late H.P.Lovecraft.)

I'd like to say that I'm There, but of course that's nonsense. Even the best of climbers rarely summit Everest. I think I've learned a lot of my lessons, but reducing them to practice is the Devil in the Details. Maybe the most important one I have managed to incorporate is to be ruthlessly honest with yourself - complacency=stagnation. You know when what you've written is garbage, so don't pretend it isn't. The Backspace and Delete keys are your friends.

Tell us about your journeys.

.
"Falsehood flies, the Truth comes limping after it." - Jonathan Swift, ca. 1710

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judih
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Re: So how/why did you start writing?

Post by judih » June 13th, 2018, 10:29 pm

In our first grade class, we had an obligatory story writing hour, every week. I loved it and filled out notebooks even without the slightest help from my teacher when i asked her how to spell my made up words.
It continued into playwriting when i was also gifted the opportunity to stage my works using classmates (usually not the visionary actors i would have liked.
I wrote puppet plays, performed them and saw that laughter works well in live performance.
Around junior high, i turned inward and started poetry. I had a teacher who encouraged me and suggested i seek out to publish. i was horrified and went into the closet.
I came out in university when i was offered a weekly session with Margaret Atwood, our writer-in-residence at the University of Toronto. That nearly wiped out my love of writing and it took 20 years or so before I came back to story writing and enjoying sharing my work to a local writers group.
Poetry creeped back into my head somewhere around 1998 and then came litkicks and the dam burst
now, it's all a trickle, condensed into haiku.
one or more a day plus the poetry i write in my head while biking.

For non-poety, i write in my blogs - Nowtherapy "http://nowtherapy.wordpress.com" for personal stuff. Class Relax "http://classrelax.wordpress.com" for reports on my meditation workshops with youth, and maybe I'll reinstate
Let My People Know "http://talkingnow.wordpress.com" about the bravery of the interesting people of my area.

thanks for asking mr Sasha, Roy. thanks for putting some more kindling on the Studio 8 fire.
Who else has a tale to share?

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sasha
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Re: So how/why did you start writing?

Post by sasha » June 22nd, 2018, 3:07 pm

judih wrote:
June 13th, 2018, 10:29 pm
...
It continued into playwriting when i was also gifted the opportunity to stage my works using classmates (usually not the visionary actors i would have liked.
...
As young adults my bro & I revived "Space Monster" to collaborate on a script for a "radio play", a low-brow puerile comic space opera with the working title "Captain Sixpack of the Spaceways". It was as bad as the title suggests (with occasional flashes of brilliance), but we were determined to record it - so we enlisted our friends as actors. We quickly discovered their limitations as thespians, and ours as directors, and the project died a merciful death after only a few taping sessions.

judih wrote:
June 13th, 2018, 10:29 pm
...
now, it's all a trickle, condensed into haiku.
...
I discovered haiku sometime in the mid 80s, in a slim volume my wife kept in the upstairs bathroom. After I'd read a few & perused the introduction and forward a few times, I concluded, "Why, anyone can write these little poems!" Which is true, of course. Ahh - but writing them well... Thirty years of these little poems later, I can honestly say (without shame) that I am light-years away from haiku mastership. But the journey continues. And that's where it's at, isn't it?

(There's an old joke among physicists in controlled nuclear-fusion research: "Controlled fusion power is only 10 years away - and always will be.")

judih wrote:
June 13th, 2018, 10:29 pm
thanks for asking mr Sasha, Roy. thanks for putting some more kindling on the Studio 8 fire.
just trying to get a little action going....


judih wrote:
June 13th, 2018, 10:29 pm
Who else has a tale to share?
(looks around the room) Anyone...?
.
"Falsehood flies, the Truth comes limping after it." - Jonathan Swift, ca. 1710

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Re: So how/why did you start writing?

Post by judih » June 23rd, 2018, 12:25 am

Room fills up with empty chairs, but wait, hark, uh....do i detect the sound of approaching feet?

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Re: So how/why did you start writing?

Post by mnaz » June 23rd, 2018, 9:32 am

I never wrote much of anything until I found Litkicks about a decade and a half ago; that site was about the most fascinating, energizing phenomenon I'd ever seen (check the archived contents). All those artists, poets, musicians, malcontents and meandering minds all bringin' it . . . Then suddenly it was gone. Plug pulled. And a few of the LK crew ended up here-- and Arcanum and a few other places-- but mostly here if you wanted the cutting edge. Doreen saved the day. And then the Baltimore poets joined in, and even had their own site for awhile, and Dino wrote poems about kiwi, haggis, the rifleman and the old hood to name a few, and there was saw, and terri, and emel and others I'm forgetting to mention, and it was like one big extended "beat"-tinged roadhouse on the net (and I actually WAS on the road for most of S8's first two years, posting from libraries). . .

It all resulted in writing. "Poems"-- too many of 'em. Road life. Back trails. Many scenes over a few years-- for all of us-- collected in a few books . . . it's amazing really.

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Re: So how/why did you start writing?

Post by judih » June 23rd, 2018, 11:00 pm

mnaz
you wrapped it up beautifully.

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Re: So how/why did you start writing?

Post by stilltrucking » October 13th, 2018, 3:32 pm

I guess I am still learning how to write.
First thought about writing a novel in 1972 It was going to about my three scarlet letters
I was going to call it to call Spider Love, or Acid, Adultery and Abortion
but there wasn't much of a market for drug-crazed sexual hallucinations
then a lucky day I stumbled on litkicks and started to think about hypertext, I think kerouac would have loved that.
but mostly
I write to learn to write because
the world revolves the hand that writes

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the mingo
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Re: So how/why did you start writing?

Post by the mingo » October 26th, 2018, 4:29 am

I began by writing words on trees. Just single words. With a calligraphy brush. Then I wrote sentences on trees. Then came the poems. I began about then to expand by writing on rock and stones. The Lone Ranger of stone. I once wrote a poem on a cow. And fenceposts. And junk cars. Abandoned houses. then, of course, paper. Something was lost with that. So I went out and wrote a poem on a construction site bulldozer and entered the world of graffiti. My handle in those heady days was go51. I wrote big and I wrote small, tiny even. I wrote something I can't remember now about alligators on the side of a derelict barn inspired by the song from the group America titled "Ventura Highway". covered the whole north side of the barn along with some spray can images.

I wrote in the sunlight. I wrote in the moonlight. I wrote in the dark. Most of it was spontaneous. Off-the-cuff. Jamming the land.

Then I read about Hanshan. Ooooog ! Reached across the centuries and an ocean and shook his hand. And went mad mad batshit in my corner of the county afterward. Found the Japanese poets. So began my career of Fuck You Haiku. And started tagging. I put my tag on a snapping turtle then wrote a haiku on the leg bone of a deer and threw it in the lake. That haiku went:

you see
our memory
zippy with food

Of course, there is more but you can see I can't get my thrill typing in a textbox but sometimes that's all I have. I think because the fun factor and the outlaw trail is missing. Certainly, the moonlight is missing.

I wrote a poem once on the steel rail of a railroad track. It lasted a hell of a lot longer than I expected.

Rommel Drives on Deep Into Egypt by Richard Brautigan, just the title of that collection of poems created a tsunami in my soul. After that, I became the ghost dancing warpath daring daylight cavalry raider of countryside & town. On the back of the greeting sign at the town limits I wrote:

Posted
Indian Land

But all this doesn't answer the question So how/why did you start writing? now does it?

When I was about eleven yr old I saw a photograph in a book about the cave paintings in France. The photo was of all the handprints outlined on the wall of that cave. I was transfixed, my mind and heart completely entranced as the moments went by. Sometime after that, I began writing. It was not the writing that satisfied me, however. It was the simple making of the marks involved in writing that satisfied me, then and now. the brush strokes, the pen strokes, and to a lesser degree, the keystrokes. The marks that say, beyond the words, "I am here. Hello."
Doll, you may have found a place of rest but I'm still on the trail.

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judih
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Re: So how/why did you start writing?

Post by judih » October 26th, 2018, 6:02 am

jamming the land
a true poet
does what's required

re: handprints on caves
my brother's newest film is about "Propaganda". He's got an interesting twist on those handprints. When the film's done, i'll let ya know.
Should be a good one.

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Re: So how/why did you start writing?

Post by the mingo » October 26th, 2018, 5:07 pm

Ok, look forward to it - thx judih 8)
Doll, you may have found a place of rest but I'm still on the trail.

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Re: So how/why did you start writing?

Post by stilltrucking » October 26th, 2018, 6:08 pm

so how did you start to read?
for me it was the comic pages of The Baltimore Sun
I wanted to know what was the joke?
I wonder did we learn how to write before we learned to read?
synchronicity I suppose


for me, the writing gets tedious if not for the reading
I am a reader. Sometimes I need to write something for me to read

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