Showing posts with label bow-ties are cool. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bow-ties are cool. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
A Writer Without Tragedy is Useless


People don't really get writers. Well, I should say they don't really get them unless they are writers themselves. From a completely objective position, it's not hard to understand why. If you're a journalist and you're writing about the really interesting, important stuff, then you're probably putting yourself in the way of some kind of harm. Fiction writers, arguably the most difficult to understand, spend their lives telling stories, inspiring the idea that we aren't really doing anything, but the "why" of us doing so is a lot more complicated than many people think.

Carrie Mathison Cry Face
You know Carrie has some tales to tell.
Source:http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mczxud39sS1risuxpo1_1280.jpg
To a certain extent, writing is about storytelling, pure and simple. Telling a tale about a great character, a great story; that's what it's all about. However, if you're willing to dig a little deeper, you will find that most of us are maladjusted in some way. Some of us have had addictions and use our writing to figure out that ever present plague. Others have experienced some sort of violence and use their words to try and make sense of it. If you're seeing a trend here, then you're on the right track; a writer without tragedy, big or small, is useless.

What Makes Tragedy Our Lifeblood?
I argue that tragedy is so important to a good story, a good writer, because it gives you an answer to search for. You may know why you had to get a divorce or why sexism exists, but in the same way that knowledge is differentiated from wisdom, so, too, is knowledge separate from understanding. That understanding, more than anything,  is what gives the writer so much power to craft an honest, authentic story.

Anecdotally, I recently had the misfortune of being defrauded by a debt collector. In trying to do the right thing and improve my financial status, I attempted to pay off a legitimate debt to an illegitimate collector. This, in its own way, is a tragedy. It placed severe limits on weeks of my life, a sacrifice that would have been well worth it had it been legitimate. This is an insignificant type of tragedy when compared to heartache, death, and the like, but it nevertheless serves as a catalyst for a story I'm really interested in telling. (Being proved naive is a great driver it turns out)

Surely, You Can't Mean Every Writer Has Experienced a Tragedy!?!
No, I don't mean to say that every person has experienced tragedy, at least not in the first-hand sense. Even writers who cover the stock market, however, understand a type of loss; they understand what it means for the markets to crash and for people to lose their livelihood, if only in an abstract sense. In the end, this sort of understanding, whether from a first person or third person observer perspective, is essential in crafting a story that people want to read, whether you're droning on about the change in federal interest rates or bringing truth to people in the form of thoughtful fiction.


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Tuesday, November 26, 2013
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Writing, like any form of art, takes on different meaning as it's used in different ways. Journalism, marketing, fiction writing; all of these different styles tend to mean something different to those within the community of the written word. Journalism is useful but corruptible. Marketing is a sell-out, a place for people to go when they're getting started or don't know how to move forward. Fiction writing, it seems, is the purest form of the craft for many; I know that's what I used to think.

Writing professionally has changed the way I think about writing, the way I write, and so much more about my life. For all the rest of you who live with the near drug-addiction-like pull of words in your life, here are the five things I've learned about writing since I started doing it professionally.

No Form of Writing is Better Than Another
This is something you learn really quickly when you've got hands in multiple cookie jars. My day job sees me writing a huge volume of marketing material for a wide variety of businesses. My freelance work has me ghost-writing creative pieces and translating work from language A to language B. In this type of setup, you quickly realize that no form of writing is "better", any more noble, than another. In the end, writing well is all that matters.

You Really Do Get Better
When I first started doing this whole thing, I wondered if I'd ever get better. Will I ever understand how to use a semi-colon? Will I become better at tying beginning and end together? The answer, it turns out, was a resounding yes. It might take your editor giving you a little tough love, but in the end, you will be much better than you were. As far as I can tell, this part never ends.

You Can't Trust Writers
Writers of all types make their living off telling a stories, real or constructed. Even non-fictional work is presented in a light that best suits the author's story. When you spend enough time weaving threads together into your own narrative, you quickly find that you can do that just as well on the page as you can off. The more evil writers, the Bill O'Reillys of the world, will take full advantage of this superpower. Though I hate to say it, you can't trust writers.

A Good Writer Can Do Something with Nothing
For a long time, I held the belief that it was the subject that gave a finished piece its pizzazz. In the end, though, it's what's written around the subject. Having written now on everything from ramen to bow-ties are cool (redacted so I don't violate any NDAs), I can say that anything can be made interesting when a good writer takes it on.

Payment Pales in Comparison to the Craft
In the earliest days of getting paid for words, I thought that I should just pump out whatever I could, as fast I could. Eventually, unless it is just a job to you, this sort of mentality fades. Instead of focusing on how much you're getting paid for something, you focus on how well you're doing something. (Note: Translation is an absolute exception to this rule) This mentality might be why so many of us are broke for a while.

What have you learned through your own writing experience?



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Tuesday, November 19, 2013
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Hi readers,

So, almost unexpectedly this blog has turned into a haven for creative content. Arguably, any piece of content that comes completely from within you is creative, that's true, but specifically, this has become a place where I can really get some things I'm thinking about out there quickly. Poetry, short story, prose; whatever it is, it doesn't matter.

It's been really fun for me to see just exactly what I can come up with in the half-hour or so a night I have to write a new piece. Some of it, as you may have seen, is decidedly lackluster. A lot of it needs shining and reworking to even be passable, but as you surely know, that comes with a hefty price-tag in time. On the other hand, I've been really proud of some of the stuff I've drummed up over the last few weeks. The Man Outside My Window and The 47 Year Old Snowman are my favorites.

At any rate, enough about me. I'd like to open GFWP up to some other voices. Whether your thing is limerick, haiku, short story, or prose, I'd like to extend the opportunity for you to feature your voice without having to start your own webpage. The only rules to follow are:

  1. Do Not Write Anything Hateful Towards Any Social Group-Exceptions to this, of course, include hatemongers, warmongers, and the like. Any content that is hateful will be summarily destroyed.
  2. Retain Your Ownership-If you write a piece that is published on this site, your content remains your own. I will retain the right to feature your content on this blog, but that is a non-exclusive deal. You're free to publish your work wherever you want it.
  3. Enjoy yourself.

If that sounds like a good deal to you, then by all means, start sending submissions to me at chashayward@gmail.com. I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with. (Note: You will not be paid for your submissions.)



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Sunday, October 13, 2013
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Welcome, everyone, to my new blog. A spiritual successor to the Japan-themed blog They Call Me An Egg, the aim of this site is to present you, my readers, with my observations about anything and everything I find interesting about the world.

What that will likely mean is sort of hard to pin down at the moment, but I'll give it a go. There will likely be a lot of content that talks about Japan. My love for the country and its culture is something I'll never escape. Yet this will also become a place to feature little short stories, commentary on any news on find interesting, photos, reviews, and everything else that inspires me to write.

The title "Go Forward with Pencil" is meant to represent the infinite opportunities to write about something in my own way. After all, every experience is something that deserves to be written about, to be preserved. I'm hoping that you will find it just as interesting as I do to find meaning in even the smallest things life throws our way.

Without launching into a long, vapid description, I'll end by saying that I'm excited to move forward from They Call Me An Egg, though, admittedly, I do so with a bittersweet taste on my tongue. As with everything, however, dynamism is the key to life.

Here's to endless growth and forward movement.
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