Stoking Your Own Fire
One of my favorite strategies for coming up with jewels to mine for my writing was keeping a writer’s journal. One of my Creative Writing instructors required us to keep the journal and we had to turn it in for a grade. There were a certain number of entries we were required to have in the journal, meaning we couldn’t wait around for inspiration to hit us, we had to actively seek it. When I was in that class, I remember doing some things that I normally might not have done otherwise. I went to IHOP and chose a booth that would allow me to eavesdrop on the conversations of the diners around me, I listened to scanmemphis.net to hear the calls that were being made to 911, I looked for fresh ways to describe scenes that I had witnessed everyday, but scenes I might not have taken note of if I had not been completing that assignment. I also read the newspaper and sought out interesting stories, usually those that were one paragraph in length and buried somewhere deep in the paper. I read obituaries for names. I was actively stoking the flame of my creativity.
Sometimes I still do this. I was in Starbucks one day and watching this couple being openly amorous with one another. Rather than turning away, I watched them and began describing the scene that was unfolding as if it were in one of my stories. Though I still do this, I don’t do it with any regularity. I want to undertake the challenge soon, though. I’ve been thinking about calling it something like “Mining for Diamonds: Thirty Days of Journaling.” Yep, I have to give it a title. That’s just me. I can’t do anything simple. *shrugs* Whatever works, right?
Today’s entry might have something to do with what happened to me this morning. It was raining out and I decided to sleep in today. I got up and turned down the dimmer switch for my overhead light and changed the television to one of the cartoon channels and climbed back in bed. I had settled down and fallen back asleep when I thought I felt someone shaking my bed, trying to wake me. I jumped up and turned around to see who it was and nobody was there. I could describe the fear I felt at that moment or just write about why I think it happened. I’m always looking for meanings in everything. Nothing is incidental as far as I am concerned. Or maybe I’ll write a line that intrigues me from someone else’s work. My newest issue of The Sun came in the mail yesterday and I spent most of yesterday reading it. There’s a poem in the magazine titled, “Dark.” A line in it struck a chord with me and I highlighted it: “He likes his job because no one else would want it, because a man feels comfortable with shit.”
So, yeah, I’m stoking my own fire.
I was reading the one that I kept in 2010. It just seemed to hold so much that can be useful for my writing at any point. Here’s one entry that I found particularly interesting:
Another idea for story or character motivation:
A student wrote about losing her father a couple of years ago around Thanksgiving. Her father was found burning in a car – not an accident – her grandfather was the one who found him and tried to put the fire out, but it was too hot for him to approach the car.
They were sitting around at the house talking about what they wanted for Christmas when they got the news.
She describes seeing her dad in the hospital, burned from head to foot.
Her mother had tried to keep her from going to the hospital, but she just needed to see him. She stood at his side loudly wailing/crying uncontrollably. The nursing staff told her that she had to leave because she could not calm down and she went into the hallway and threw up on the floor.
She’s about 15 or 16 years old now. Two years have passed and she still cries uncontrollably whenever she thinks about that incident. She probably can still picture him lying there in that bed.
From this I realized, there’s some very interesting stuff going on around us daily. All we have to do, as artists, is be attuned to the ordinary elements of life so that we can breathe life into them, making them extraordinary.
Here’s to hoping you find the extraordinary in the ordinary. Make beautiful music, my friends, because whether we pay attention or not, music is being made all around us. From the crickets communicating with one another last night while my son and I went for our after-dinner walk or the dialogue of the waitress who served us last night. Never stop searching for the extraordinary in even the smallest of moments.
“You can find something truly important in an ordinary minute.” –Mitch Albom, For One More Day
Peace & Love,
Rosalind
