Aspiring Writitude

So one of the books I had to read for my creative writing was Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. She gives a lot of what I consider to be very good writing tips and exercises. One such exercise is simply writing. The steps are as follows:

1) Create a designated notebook for timed writing.
2) Allocate a specific time frame.
3) Write.

The only rules in this activity are that you cannot lift your pen from the paper until that time is up. Ignore punctuations and don’t cross anything out. What you’re trying to do here is get what she calls “first thoughts” out on the paper. Since the brain has an automatic censoring system, you’re trying to bypass that completely and just write the very first thing that comes to mind. Not what we pretend are the first things due to the whole censure thing. Obviously this takes longer to achieve for some than for others. I just did this exercise today for the third or fourth time and it automatically sorta came out in the form of a blog entry. So I thought I’d just post it. I gave myself 20 minutes. It’s kinda long…592 words according to MSWord. So feel free to skip the italicized part of this post if you just wanna read something about Guy Ritchie’s new movie Revolver.

It’s amazing how life changes so fast. No matter how much I talk about it or write about it, it n ever ceases to amaze me. Seeing an old friend today after a year of absence was great. We kept in touch mostly through text messages and AIM over the years. Actually that’s the only way we talked along with the occasional email. Finally we decided it was time to actually see each other and everything just picked up like nothing ever happened. No time in between where we didn’t see each other. Still talking about events that took place almost 2 years ago like they just happened 2 days ago. Then on the other side of the coin you got those people who you’ve talked to a lot on the phone and no matter how many times you see them, it’s just not a comfortable situation. Actually I think most people I know are like that. Specifically from my high school days I mean. This one person is one of the few of the former. You know who you are and I am eternally grateful for your friendship no matter how many times you have threatened to end my life. What a world we live in. So I’m thinking about writing a book. Humorously enough, people have been telling me that for several years and I just sorta went along in a joking manner. But now that I’m actually pursuing writing as a source of income, I am taking that proposition seriously. But then, where would I begin? That’s always been my biggest problem. Beginning. Where to start? How the crap am I supposed to know where to start? So usually by the time I discover a way to begin whatever it is that I wanna write, I already have most of the body of the composition figured out in one form or another. So we’ll see how that goes. I’m not even exactly sure what to write about. I have so many random anecdotes floating around in my head that to find a starting point seems impossible. Would I write about my travels and sojourns in different countries? About the people I believe influenced me the most? About the Baha’i Faith, which has undoubtedly been the single consistent strand in my life that has held it all together? About the women in my life? Ha. Or maybe about the insanities of high school drama? Got plenty of experience in that department. Or how about just movies or something? That might be fun. But it wouldn’t have anything to do with me. Oh well. We’ll see how that goes. If anyone could give me some suggestions would be fantacular. This writing exercise is pretty fun. Hopefully I’ll accomplish the goal of filling up at least one notebook each month. But then what? I’d just have a pile of dated notebooks. Notebooks which will be impossible to read, even by myself. My handwriting sucks and I have failed tests because of this problem. Not being able to read your own notes most definitely sucks. On a scale of ‘good’ to ‘bad’, this situation would fall under ‘most heinous’. And now my time is almost up. Three minutes to get to 20 minutes. Maybe next time I shouldn’t look at the time because then I’ll start writing about it. Like now. But this is not so bad. One sheet covered front and back in 20 minutes. 99 sheets to go and one notebook will be out of the way.

Hi again. Yeah so that’s that. If you skipped that, here’s the summary in the form of an equation:

friends = good
writing = good
however, friends ≠ writing.

So if anyone has any suggestions as to how a book can be written, please leave comments. Don’t let that word verification thing intimidate you. I was getting way too much spam.

And, as promised, a word on Revolver. I don’t know. I love Guy Ritchie and all. Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch are two of my favorite movies. I haven’t seen Swept Away yet. But I did see the trailer for Revolver and I can see his signature in the images and all. At the same though, it looks totally different. It feels a lot darker and more serious. From what I’ve heard, those dumb critics at the Toronto Film Festival have all been bashing it. If you’re a loyal reader, you know that I really don’t care about what they say. It just worries me since it’s what the majority of moviegoers will base their judgments on before even watching the movie. Knowing full well that humans tend to latch on to movies’ faults, you begin to see where the problem lies. Fools. It’s supposed to be his return to his “roots”, but I have a feeling that it’s going to be a lot different than what people are expecting. By “roots”, I mean bankable movies. And by “people”, I mean his fans...the rest of you are just animals.


...what you call discovery, i call the rape of the natural world