Nate Briggs's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"
5 Signs That You Were Born to Write
1) Walking through a neighborhood, you see an unusual house: perhaps of an unusual design, set back from the street, or hemmed in by trees. The instant you see it, you start wondering who lived there. Were they happy? Were they in love? Were they frightened? Did they live a long time?
Normal people don't wonder about these things.
2) You see someone crying on the train, and think about it the rest of the day. What had happened? Who were those people she was with? Did she feel better later? What was going through the minds of the rest of the people in the car?
Normal people don't think about something like this the rest of the day.
3) You look at a photograph from 100 years ago and a face in it makes an impression on you. Who was that person? How did they get into the picture? What happened before the picture? What happened after? Were they happy in their lives? Did they die young?
Normal people don't wonder about strangers long dead.
4) You get busy with a manuscript and don't remember you've got something cooking until you smell the pan burning and the smoke detector goes off.
Normally we call these people absent minded, but this happens to writers all the time.
5) You bounce urgently out of bed, looking for pencil and paper, because - in 5 seconds - you're going to forget how that sentence should go and the perfect way it's expressed (in your mind) will be lost forever.
Normal people just roll over and go back to sleep
Normal people don't wonder about these things.
2) You see someone crying on the train, and think about it the rest of the day. What had happened? Who were those people she was with? Did she feel better later? What was going through the minds of the rest of the people in the car?
Normal people don't think about something like this the rest of the day.
3) You look at a photograph from 100 years ago and a face in it makes an impression on you. Who was that person? How did they get into the picture? What happened before the picture? What happened after? Were they happy in their lives? Did they die young?
Normal people don't wonder about strangers long dead.
4) You get busy with a manuscript and don't remember you've got something cooking until you smell the pan burning and the smoke detector goes off.
Normally we call these people absent minded, but this happens to writers all the time.
5) You bounce urgently out of bed, looking for pencil and paper, because - in 5 seconds - you're going to forget how that sentence should go and the perfect way it's expressed (in your mind) will be lost forever.
Normal people just roll over and go back to sleep
The Charm of a Small Place
So where is Elsinore exactly?
It's in the Department of Imagination - AKA Fiction - so it's exact location is suitably vague. Probably a couple of days drive from Lake Wobegon. And maybe a little less than that from the Simpson's home town of Springfield. And, even though winters in Oklahoma can be pretty miserable, Elsinore is well south of Frostbite Falls.
You can get there by bus. But they took the trains away in the 1960s. The tiny airport allows private planes, but most people arrive by car.
According to conversations I've heard from people who live there, Elsinore is about an hour from Will Rogers Airport in Oklahoma City - and a morning's drive from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, if you stay within the speed limit.
Nothing much has happened there, specifically, in terms of history. Its most traumatic connection is with the Dust Bowl. It was a starting point for Okies headed to California when times got bad. It's modern historical connection is with the iconic Route 66 - the "Mother Road" - even after Route 66 has been swallowed up by I-40. (The publicity still is from the old television drama "Route 66". I doubt that anyone would tune in to a series called "I-40".)
My own Elsinore - my own home town - was bypassed by the Interstate system: giving that place an intense feeling of isolation: being "out, and away". But I wanted Elsinore to be near a big road - because sometimes it's convenient to include that kind of river of commerce as part of certain stories.
Elsinore is within easy driving distance of some attractive lakes. Since most people own their own homes, apartments are generally shabby, and hard to find. The town is very walkable - but almost nobody walks. And, like so much of the Heartland, there are more seniors than children because young people with energy and talent go away to School...and never come back. (More on this later).
It is an ordinary, unexceptional place. A green sign along the divided highway. A sign that slides along the passenger side window, and then is left behind. Which means that Elsinore, OK, only offers only hundreds of stories of life and death - love and loss - happiness and unhappiness within its borders. Unlike a place like Brooklyn: where all the possible stories number in the millions.
The advantage Elsinore has is that I know it: right down to the ground. And, like all the rest of us, the time I have for storytelling is limited.
It's in the Department of Imagination - AKA Fiction - so it's exact location is suitably vague. Probably a couple of days drive from Lake Wobegon. And maybe a little less than that from the Simpson's home town of Springfield. And, even though winters in Oklahoma can be pretty miserable, Elsinore is well south of Frostbite Falls.
You can get there by bus. But they took the trains away in the 1960s. The tiny airport allows private planes, but most people arrive by car.
According to conversations I've heard from people who live there, Elsinore is about an hour from Will Rogers Airport in Oklahoma City - and a morning's drive from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, if you stay within the speed limit.
Nothing much has happened there, specifically, in terms of history. Its most traumatic connection is with the Dust Bowl. It was a starting point for Okies headed to California when times got bad. It's modern historical connection is with the iconic Route 66 - the "Mother Road" - even after Route 66 has been swallowed up by I-40. (The publicity still is from the old television drama "Route 66". I doubt that anyone would tune in to a series called "I-40".)
My own Elsinore - my own home town - was bypassed by the Interstate system: giving that place an intense feeling of isolation: being "out, and away". But I wanted Elsinore to be near a big road - because sometimes it's convenient to include that kind of river of commerce as part of certain stories.
Elsinore is within easy driving distance of some attractive lakes. Since most people own their own homes, apartments are generally shabby, and hard to find. The town is very walkable - but almost nobody walks. And, like so much of the Heartland, there are more seniors than children because young people with energy and talent go away to School...and never come back. (More on this later).
It is an ordinary, unexceptional place. A green sign along the divided highway. A sign that slides along the passenger side window, and then is left behind. Which means that Elsinore, OK, only offers only hundreds of stories of life and death - love and loss - happiness and unhappiness within its borders. Unlike a place like Brooklyn: where all the possible stories number in the millions.
The advantage Elsinore has is that I know it: right down to the ground. And, like all the rest of us, the time I have for storytelling is limited.
