Writing and Reading

I must bow, ladies and gentlemen. Yes. I have received my first ‘personal’ praise on my blog just today. It was a momentous occasion. It happened while working at Meijer today (I’m a part-time cashier, and Meijer is a supermarket, for those of you not from the Midwest). Not that I haven’t received praise online for the present amount of keyboard pounding–I have read a good amount of praise. But when I get it from someone personally, the feeling is existential. Very much like when someone close to me reads my manuscript. As all of you may know by now from this post, others reading my work quickens my aura and my strength as much as Duncan MacLeod, the highlander, cutting off his enemy’s head (for those who don’t get the analogy, do a freakin’ search, man! Who in this planet hasn‘t heard of “The Highlander”??). It is a phantasmal rush of strength. I can bend iron bars now as if they were plastic straws.

Anyway, the praise came from my good friend Orion Brower of Grand Rapids, Michigan. That’s right, big man, I’m referencing you on my blog. Deal with it. Orion (yes, what a name, I know–he’s, like, totally cool) is a man of the ages, a man born centuries ago and born generations later. He is a man who exists in the now, lives for tomorrow, and is remembered in the past. The expression of his personality is that of the most beautiful enigma (not the Enigma my good ol’ alter ego Chuck Stake would rave about from the short story “Sanctuary”, though: see this post), an enigma that can be easily understood but hardly interpreted. For the incomprehensible, yet infectious, proud warrior of the spirit Orion Brower can hardly be interpreted correctly. You must peel away his layers to fully understand him.

The best way I could describe Orion is a cross between “The Fast and the Furious” and “Star Wars”. He’s like a funky, buff Jedi Knight with a hard edge and a need for speed of the soul and heart and also a strut that wipes a young John Travolta off the face of the earth, making the little girlie man run away while peeing in his pants. Yeah, Orion is that cool of a man. No disco for him, man. He’s cooler than disco.

You wouldn’t know it, though, but Orion is actually more charming than a teddy bear. Aaaaaaawwwww!

Anyway, this is my salute to Mr. Orion Brower for being the first person to praise my blog. Thanks and may many, many women fawn over you but then get scared away by the raging warrior of a lady, the super-amazon of the ages, Aldijana Sevic. *Pierre starts screaming like a banshee and swings the ropes of the jungle*

P.S. As a little added bonus of entertainment, I have added this video to demonstrate what would happen to us writers if all paper and writing utensils and known word processors and typewriters vanished from the face of the earth. Enjoy.

It’s sort of fun to explore ways to fire up your brain. Honestly, to me, it’s pretty essential. I mean, how else do you keep your head flowing with words? How else does a writer keep on…writing?

Over the years, I’ve done it in many ways–from the very simple ‘immerse-yourself-in-tv-documentaries-or-countless-countless-written-reports-and-articles’ routine to gather ideas, to the quirky but fun wordplay poem where you randomly open up the dictionary, pick out a set number of random words without looking them up (10-20, maybe more) and construct a poem using them. Which I’ve done. And have enjoyed doing. These two tactics of mine specifically point toward an actual goal of actually starting a project. But there are even ‘writing’ games out there that are simple devoted to exercising your mind, which is also important when it comes time to actually…write.

Speaking of random words, random thoughts (*coughs* freewriting), this topic dropped into my head while I was taking a shower just thirty minutes ago. Not kidding.

Aaaaaaaanyway…let’s get down to it. I’ve already mentioned two of them. Here’s some more: (brace yourself, by the way. This will span a wide range of ways to play)

A number of years ago, I had the pleasure of ordering this awesome book… Fiction Writer’s Brainstormer by James V. Smith Jr., a guide to brainstorming, exercising your mind for writing, stuff like that. Really great stuff! In it are little games and puzzles involving words, some of the best things that have worked my head up. Like this:

solve this puzzler: (it is a remark made by a famous American)

Genius is…

spir1/¢ation n 9t9/¢/spiration

Figured it out? Want the answer? E-mail me or leave a comment! *Pierre falls down laughing* I’m not kidding. Just e-mail me or leave a comment. I’ll give you the answer. The point of it is to get your mind to think. Think about words.

Here’s an easier one (maybe) from the same book:

Hidden in this message is the best advice ever when it comes to writing. But you need to cross out five vowels in order for it to make sense…

OFPIEVNEVYOOWUREELYESS

I lied. This one’s actually pretty tricky. The trick to figuring out the message isn’t about the clue… (crossing out five vowels). I gave you that clue not as a means to solving the puzzle…but as a means for you to really look at the ‘phrase’, keeping the ‘vowels’ in mind. Train your eyes to see the ‘vowels’ and then look at the whole phrase…and you just might actually see the hidden message! Again, e-mail me or leave a comment if you want to know the answer (OR…if you have the answer!)

You really do need to check out that book. It’s a phenomenal piece of work. It really gets your brain going, plus there’s truly timeless bits of raw and real genius when it comes to plotting and generating ideas for future projects and such. I strongly suggest picking it up.

By the way, here’s another cool brain juicer. It’s simple. Look at this picture, let your brain go empty…and see what comes out:

I really do have a hard time looking at that myself–but it’s amazing what ends up coming to mind when you just…look at it. SHEEEESH!!!

How about this one?–this will be more of a demonstration of a certain ‘process’ that I hold close to me. It’s endearing to me, because it’s from one of my favorite films. Many of you might know of it. But it’s one of the best inspirations when thinking about how to write a ‘poem’. Here it is….

I meant it when I said poetry was my first love. It’ll always be. In all honesty, when I write–whether it’s fiction or poetry or short stories or non-fiction, I don’t care–my ‘poetry’ is the basis for everything. It’s about imagery for me, letting go, letting it all fly and flow.

And yet, there are still more kinds of games, some of them fun ones, too. Not that any of the previous ones aren’t fun. But these’ll surprise you. Seriously. You have to broaden the scope of what it means to exercise your brain, to get your thinking muscles stretching, bending. Try these games on, but before you do, know that you would need multiple players:

All right, I’m back. Sorry. I just had to go pee very badly from watching those. Okay, well, see what I mean by ‘fun’? And the point of it is to get your brain stretching, get your mind thinking of words. It’s all about words. Words, words, words (as Hamlet would say).

There are, of course, plenty of other ‘games’, other strategies, tactics. Sometimes even just typing away (as I’m doing right now) is itself an exercise to get you to…write. The rhythm of the keyboard will do the work for you. Suddenly your brain feels in sync with the sound of those keys pounding away underneath your fingertips. It can be as simple as that.

You have to remember one thing, though, about anything you try when it comes to brainstorming and writing and even overcoming the so-called ‘writer’s block’–

Let your brain go. Don’t hold onto it so tight. Let your brain stretch. Let your imagination run in place and watch the world form right before your inner eyes.

When that happens, you only have to do one simple thing: write about what you’ve seen!