How To Bake A Story

I always get a bit stressed by the writing tip, 'Write every single day of your life.'  Because I tend to push myself for a day or two and than lapse.  For me, when I don't have a single defined project I'm working on, it's 2,000 words a day or nothing at all for a week.  And that's just how I work as a writer.  Sometimes I think advice like 'write every day' can be slightly discouraging, possibly even damaging, because I think it overlooks a very important aspect of the creative process.  Something I like to call 'baking the story.'
Because you can have all the ingredients for a great story - the idea, the characters, a plot outline - but without the right amount of baking time, it will still be a mushy mess of undercooked goop.  Trying to write that story is like trying to eat bread dough.  It doesn't really taste or feel like bread, yet all the ingredients that make bread are there.
I have prepared my little 'recipe' for how I go about writing a story and how I incorporate 'baking.'  But I should first point out that I only use this method when I'm in limbo between stories, or working on developing new pieces.  If you are already well descended into a novel, or screenplay, or some other project that you are focusing all your creative energy on, then yes, you must write every single day.  You must force yourself to sit at your keyboard and type, even when you don't want to, even when your mental capabilities are exhausted.  This not only drills into you a good writing work ethic, it is also the only effective way I have found to finishing a full-length work.  However, even then it is good to take a break and spend a few days 'baking.'

A Creative Recipe 
Ingredients:

• The Basic Idea
• Notebook&Pens/Laptop (whichever you prefer)
• A Few Uninterrupted Hours
• Storyboards&Character Development Sheets (optional) 

 First, of course, I start with the basic idea.  A concept or theme I want to explore, or maybe I want to try and give a story to an interesting character I've created, or maybe I'll just have one of those moments where you go, "Hey, I think I want to write a dystopian about genetically engineered butterflies who sing and become friends with Fluffnarks and together they fight off an evil flying octopus."  Be it short story, screenplay, novel, or whatever.  Then I'll sit down and brainstorm in a notebook - or laptop, depends -, writing down a basic synopsis and what I know about the characters.  I'll sketch a rough plot arc or make a storyboard.  Occasionally I'll fill out character development sheets and get a bearing on who populates my story.  How much pre-planning I do depends.  I really don't like to plan much, otherwise I feel restricted, so I keep it minimal, only writing down what is absolutely necessary to the story.  If I feel up to it, I might even write a few scenes - usually only the beginning, since I find it hard to write out of chronological order, but if I have a really good idea for a scene and I don't want to forget it I'll scribble it down.
Note: I say 'a few uninterrupted hours' since that's what I usually spend when toying with a new basic idea.  However, if you're pretty sure you have an idea you want to invest a lot of time in, then the process could span weeks if not months.

Baking Your Story:
This is where I find the very act of not writing to be so valuable.  I set my little bowl of raw story ingredients inside the inner part of mind and just leave it there.  That still doesn't mean I am not 'writing.'  I'm letting the story emerge in to all it's potential.
Though I think it varies from person to person, and you'll have to find what works for you on your own, the things I like to do when I'm taking a period off from the creative process are:

• Depending on the size of the project, taking a day or even a full week off even thinking about writing can be invaluable.  You know when you're doing a puzzle and you just can't seem to figure out that one part of it?  And then you step away for awhile and you come back and it all makes sense and you wonder how you couldn't see it before? Well, the same applies to writing.  Don't be afraid to push all thoughts of writing from your mind for awhile, and give your head a little breathing room.  Who knows, when you come back that plot hole you've been stressing over for months might just suddenly make sense.
• Listen to music.  Music, for me, is one of the biggest tools I use as a writer.  I'll sit for hours with my headphones in and just soak up songs.  Sometimes, a song will just hit your soul in the right way, or give you the right emotion, and your mind opens up to exactly the right thing that needs to happen in your story.  Music, for me, is the vanguard ship of inspiration.  Create a playlist of all the songs that remind you of your story so you can listen to it when you start writing.
• Read, read, read!  Or anything that tells a great stories, like movies and TV shows.  I like to pick apart stories, seeing what makes them work and what elements I would change.  But sometimes I just like to sit back and absorb the story for what it is, without even analyzing it.  Let words, let characters, let emotions, let plot arcs and plots twists, let lessons and failures saturate who you are, and stir inside you so that when the time comes you can burst with story.
• Do something else artistic.  Paint.  Draw a picture.  Photoshop.  Write a song.  Play an instrument.  Using another part of your creative muscle can set in motion a whole bunch of things.    
• Talk it out.  This usually happens at the end of my 'baking' process.  Talk through your ideas with someone.  Ask the opinions of your friends, your family, your peers, your neighbors, your teachers.  Sometimes just saying things out loud will make you realize that they could be improved upon this way, or don't work in that way, or need something more, or less, or are simply too complex.       

   
How Do You Know When Your Story is Ready?
I've found this varies from person to person.  For me, I'll admit it's very much an 'Aha!' moment when everything illuminates.  Usually I know a story is ready if it holds my attention for a few days.  If I've been baking it for awhile and haven't lost interest, forgotten about it, and I still feel passionately about it, I know it's ready to be written.  When I feel compelled to the keyboard, when I know I have to write this, I have no other choice, that's what I consider my 'oven timer.'  The bread is done.  I don't know if it's like this for everyone, but once you feel that sense of rightness inside you, that deep urge to start pounding out words, then chances are your story is ready.
There's just one thing you have to watch out for.  Don't bake for too long.  It's easy to stop writing and get caught in apathy and laziness.  As soon as you start feeling this, kick yourself awake.  Chances are you've slipped into a lull and have overcooked your story, and it's time to go write and write lots.  It can be good to set a limit for the amount time you won't write, if you tend to slip into the dulldrums easily.  Say, 'I'll only let myself off for a week.'  Though I hate the advice, "You'll just have to figure it out for yourself," it does apply here.  Test your boundaries, find your strengths and weaknesses.  And remember, just because something works for someone else, that does not mean it will work for you.  My whole little baking process might be of no use to you, and you may have your own equally effective and equally valid methods.   

Don't Be Discouraged
Some recipes are failures.  Some stories just don't work out.  You will have flubs, you will have successes, and you will have things beyond your wildest dreams.  That's just what writing is.  The story you've been planning and working on for months might not hold water, but it will help you in so many ways, the least of which will be to help you perfect the next thing you write.
Just remember, not writing is an essential part of writing.  Never be afraid to let a story sit and stew.
We all have stories to tell.  Just make it a good one.        

^(OvO)^

 
        

The Writer and the Phoenix

I'm one of those writers that has long periods where I write nothing at all, staring at a blank screen, biting my lip and wondering why I bother trying to tell stories at all.  I sink into deep bouts of discouragement where I can't escape apathy, dragged into a mood where I simply don't care about the words I create, I can't get a grip on my ideas, my characters, my prose, and I feel them slipping out of my mind into that black space at the back of your existence where all dead thoughts go.
At these points, I begin to question myself, I ask, "What if I'm not really meant to write at all?"  Because can you stink so low there is a point of no return?  I always ask myself -- though, for a 15-year-old to ask such questions of himself is indeed quite silly -- the terrifying question, "What if I have nothing left to say?  What if I have told all I have to tell?  What if no one ever did care or ever will care?"
But then, deep in my heart, something unfolds.  A match is lit, a spark ignites, a light erupts.  And suddenly bursting, bubbling up like volcanic lava, are my words.  And I realize they were always there, just out of reach, but still present in my being, like always.  My fingers fly over the keyboard as I write, desperate to get everything out of me.  I am filled with a wonderful, irresistible love for writing, and I must write every second I can.
During these times I can never understand how, just a few days ago, or in some cases mere hours ago I thought I could never write again.  During these times I feel like a writer, I feel some paragon emotion .  I desire an eternal circle of nothing but this feeling.
Yet, as I rise higher into that glorious writer's emotion, I fall again.  I am back to staring at a blank screen, biting my lip and wondering why I bother trying to tell stories at all... and worse, I think that if I only get such brief bursts of true love for writing, I'm clearly not a true writer.
But, again, a match, a spark, a light.  I'm up again into the world of my words, loving every second my mind is spilling them out onto paper.
Call me genius, I think I've discovered a pattern.

While I do believe every writer is different concerning the creative process, I think a lot of people go through the same vicious, glorious cycle I go through.  Writing doldrums to writing ecstasy, writing doldrums to writing ecstasy, writing doldrums to writing ecstasy.  And I think that's just the way it goes.
I think a writer is like the Phoenix of mythology.  The Phoenix is a bird of fire, and it obtains life by rising from the ashes of it's predecessor.  First it rises in a spectacular burst of flame and vitality and heat, and then it dies, sinking into ash and death.  And yet, it rises again, just as spectacular, and then sinks to ash again.  And it rises again.  And it sinks again.  It's a beautiful rebirth cycle, and I have found it to be an accurate metaphor for the way I process my creativity.
I think the thing to remember is the Phoenix always rises again.  It's a cycle, a process, and you can't have both  at once.  Fire cannot exist without ash, nor can ash exist without fire.  Out of our writing doldrums will erupt a great cascade of words, and that too dies, but to be replaced with a new waterfall of stories.  Sometimes the period of ash will stretch on for months, a bleak, ravaged landscapes that come with much pain and discouragement, and sometimes the period of flames and words only lasts an hour -- but it will always come again.
So, if you haven't written anything for months.  If you feel like I have, doubting yourself and your writing, just remember one thing.  One very important fact you must never forget. 
You will rise again.

            


Post Script - An Infinite Creative Journey
I mentioned this concept briefly in Discouragement and Creativity but I thought I'd expand upon it here.  
I imagine creativity like a road, an infinite journey.  A circle, if you will.  I'm one of those writers with the unfortunate tendency to compare myself with other authors -- "They write prose so much better than me," "Their plot is so much more development than mine," "Their characters are more likable," "How do they produce such beautiful words?"  However, not only is this unhealthy, it is unnecessary.  If you think of creativity as an infinite line of good ideas, bad ideas, words, pictures, underdeveloped concepts, developed concepts, over-developed concepts, a soup of brilliance and enlightenment, failures and shortcomings, then no matter where you are on that line it doesn't really matter.  As long as your engaged in active, raw creativity you are behind, ahead, and right beside your fellow artists.  This doesn't mean you don't have to learn the tools and tricks of your craft, but so do we all.  You mustn't judge yourself on where someone else is placed on an infinite line.   
I think that's a really beautiful concept, and one I find encouraging.  As writers, we're on a never-ending journey, so don't bother glancing over your shoulder at what other people are doing.
You're doing just fine where you are.  

         

Writing is Not a Profession

For most of my life, whenever someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would without hesitation say, "Writer."  My mind has always been fixated on writing "professionally," as my living.  But I look around, I look at the fabulous community of writers I'm a part of, all of them talented in their own ways, all of them deserving to go and become successful authors.  Then I see the small amount of people who actually make it as a successful, "professional" author - so few.  So many of the writers I know, and very likely myself included, will probably never amount to be as famous a well-read as they deserve to be.  Sure, we will be published in small degrees, impacting our little corners of the world (and, so I don't sound like the pessimist I am, the pebbles we drop there will help start the avalanche on the world), but possibly none of us will reach a point of the thing everyone desires: success.  There is only one J. K. Rowling, and there are a million talented authors which will amount to very little, which will remain nameless and unread to the general public.  From this point of the view, the business of being a writer is discouraging to say the least.  I think it's also the wrong point of view.
Writing isn't a profession, it's a culture.

When someone asks you what you're planning to be "when you grow up," don't tell them writer.  Tell them accountant, electrical engineer, botanist, and teacher.  These are professions, some of many we all must take up in order to support ourselves and achieve some degree of that elusive societal standard of "success."  If someone asks you, "What are you?" then you must answer, "A Writer."  Being a writer isn't something you're becoming, it's something you are.  I know for me, I will always be writing, when I'm old, when I'm sad and when I'm happy, when the world is crumbling around me and the sky is falling I shall be writing.  God put in me a raging desire to spill out words, so spill out words I must, and that is what makes me a writer. 
The way I see it, all artists are part of a giant "culture" (and this includes musicians and painters, sculptures and poets, artists of all sorts).  We support each other, we help each other, we war with each other, and we're all united with the passion for creating.  Just to be part of this is beautiful and fulfilling.  When we turn writing into a profession, when we treat it as something we're aiming "to be," we lose what it is to be a Writer.
Artists WANT to create -- it's a desire in them that can never be fully satisfied
"Professionals" work because they have to support their day to day needs. 
Don't get the two mixed up.
So the next time you feel discouraged and feel like you'll never become a professional writer, don't worry. You really already are.          

^(OvO)^