The price of a good story

Do writers have another way of looking at life? I think so. A couple of years ago I read an article about a writer, I even think it was Stephen King. Anyway, it was about how this writer looked at life, the difference that made him able to create stories the other of us do not create. This particular writer could go to the store to buy the newspaper, and someone could enter the store with mud on his shoes. Everyone can see it is mud, but he did not see mud. He saw blood. And then his mind started to run. Why does this guy have blood on his shoes? Who have he killed? Or is he running away from a killer? He looks a bit stressed... And the story is there!

My question is if this ability to see life from a very different point of view is something good or bad. We are all living life with all its pain and conflicts, and sometimes when I am in a conflict my mind really runs away with me. It creates huge games people are playing against me. Suddenly my partner are betraying me, my enemies are in secret understanding with each other and I become the big drama queen. You are all against me!

This is great for my writing! I am using conflicts, life and all it involves in me writing. I am writing about my life as it is, but then I am also adding my fantasies, my own dramas I just created by myself to the story. No problem, it is just a story. The problem starts when the story I just created starts to run my life. And it does.

Is this the price good writers always have to pay for a good story?

Caption

I am still writing on my book of books, the Story of My Life. The story is already there, I am just working with the captions now. It is really a job, I have to work it, nothing is there for free, not even a caption! Not even a chapter...

What is a caption? How do I create it? Do we have chapters with captions in life? In which chapter of my life am I now? What is a good caption? Can we really make chapters of life? How do I do that? What does my life really contains? What do the chapters contain? What am I really telling in my story? There is the story, the obvious things, and then there is the story behind the lines, the things you just understand with your feelings, the real story! What kind of things, what kind of story am I telling?

I need to know what my life contains to be able to put the right caption on it. What does it really contain? There is pain, seeking, love, hate, betrayer... relations and loneliness. There is you, and me. How do I put a caption on that?

Writers Heaven

Just a couple of days ago I was sitting in a very nice and special bookstore. There are plenty of books, of course, and they have a very nice coffee shop. You can actually sit there in the bookstore and have your coffee while reading a book or writing your own! Looking at people, listening on what your neighbours at the table next to yours are talking about, get some real life ideas!

I was writing on my own book. I had a soda water and sat down for over four hours! It was like in a writers heaven! Why have I not done it before?

Writing in Pain

I am so tired of taking shit from people! So tired tired tired of it! Can anyone save me? Please!

I think there is a myth saying that all artists, writers, musicians, or whatever, are performing their job much better when they feel bad and down. Active alcoholics are creating masterpieces while they get depressed and drinking. I do not know if that is true. Somehow maybe it is, because if we would be without experience of the painful life we would not be able to write about it. And all the suffering we are writing about is probably what people are identifying themselves with, because life is suffering.

But somehow I think that authors are putting themselves in more pain that other people... or at least accepting to stay in more pain that other people just so we can use it in our writing. Or am I just fooling myself? Am I just thinking this because I am a week person unable to change my life, making excuses to stay in pain? Or are we just thinking in a different way about pain, the same pain everybody has in their life?

What is the correlation between writing and pain?

The power of Emptiness

 

I was not blogging anything yesterday, because... Because I have all this different reasons I just made up, and I can make up as many reasons as I want. Lack of time, was already writing another story, I forgot, someone else used my computer, it was too late, I was too tired, I had to do something else, I did not had anything to write about... and so on. The excuses are without any end. I am making myself a victim for the circumstances I create.

The truth is that I have to create the fuel that makes me write. I am the creator. I have to burn to be able to burn, and I am responsible for that to happen. The only way of doing it is to write. Even if I just have nothing to write. Nothing is hard to write about, to explain. What is emptiness? I would say it is a power. Actually, it would be a great writing exercise to write about emptiness, nothing, vacuum. So, that is on for today!

 

 

The way I do it

A question I have been asking myself several times, repeatedly, is how do people do it? How do you write a marvellous book that gives you a name out there forever and brings you millions of millions dollar? I am thinking of John Grisham, August Strindberg, Astrid Lindgren, Stephen King, Selma Lagerlöf and all the other authors we all know about... How did they do that?

I have been searching for the answer of this question since I started to write. My search was like orientating without a map. I had no idea of what I was looking for, and even less where to look. I guess I have been looking for the magic button, a message just for me. Push this button on your computer, and voila – you will have a great story! Guess what - that never happened!

Walking the long and sometimes hard way called LIFE I found a way of writing that works for me. After mixing and tricking, and most of all; trying to find an easy way, I had to resign and accept that writing is a process that takes time, courage, and sometimes it causes pain while I have to work, work, work it. It is more than just a job. It is a way of living.

 

Reading

I am reading ever day. By reading, I learn how to write. I read all different kind of stuff, not only the authors I prefer. Reading books makes my fantasy burn; it twists my reality inside out. It helps me to understand the possibilities for what I can create with just a blank piece of paper and a pen. There are no limits. When other authors are breaking boundaries while writing it turns me on to do the same. It helps me to change, develop myself.

Writing

Just as I am reading, I am also writing every day. To write is to internalize what I have learned by reading, and living. It gives me a chance to play around with my thoughts and ideas, find new worlds and ways of expressing myself. I am discovering. Writing is like a film; I can see it in my head as if it would have its own life. I just play around with it and discover situations that never been... always been... in my head. Then I put them on paper, and the flow in on. Writing every day makes my writing flow.

Socializing

While I am reading and writing at home, I also socialize with likeminded people away from home. They help to improve my writing skills, and become a part of my living. They give more life into my already existing life. Friends tell me who I am, they tell me things I do not know about life, and twists my brain inside out. Suddenly life becomes more, thicker, bigger and a question to answer.

About a year ago, I met a guy at a webpage, also a scuba diver like me. We exchanged some emails and said that maybe we would go out scuba dive some time. But a year later we still haven't met, and the mail was a bit silent. I lived my life, met more people, got myself more interests. I joined the writing group at Thursday evenings and... there he was. The same guy I spoke to at the internet a year earlier were suddenly sitting right in front of me! That kind of things happens when I choose to live. And it gives me wonderful thoughts about life. How? How in the whole world could this happen? And a story starts to run in my head, with all the fantasies that makes a story.

Meditations

I am doing two different meditations each day. My morning meditation is a kind of affirmation. I am thinking and focusing at what I truly want in my life. I want to write, live on my writing and get the Nobel Prize in literature. Therefore, I am closing myself and entering the world of possibilities, I can see myself clearly. I am an old woman living in a big house, sitting in the garden with a cup of tea in my hand. My legs are resting on another chair, and my eyes are closed. You ask what I am doing. I say I am working. I am just creating another wonderful story in my head to write down later on this evening. I can see the Nobel Prize in literature on my wall, the one I got just a couple of years ago. It makes me so proud.

The other meditation I am doing is an evening meditation. That one is about gratefulness. I believe that the key to get what we want is being grateful for what we already have. When I am grateful for what I have, I am also discovering more ways to use the things I have. And no one denying the source of the goodness in our lives will ever get anything more. Be grateful!

Affirmations

I am telling myself that I am a Nobel Prize winner in literature, ever day. I am telling myself that I am living on my reading; I am one of the most marvellous authors of this decade, this century. I am bright, smart, a new goddess in the writers' heaven. This is a reality, it is already here, now, and it is the only existing truth about me.

If you cannot see it, well I am so sorry, but that is really your problem. I can see it, I know it is truth because I already have it in my mind. Everything that ever has been created started in one single persons mind as an idea. I am the creator of my future, my life, my reality. I am the Nobel Prize winner in literature.

Living

My writing is my living, or maybe it is the opposite. Maybe my living is my writing. It is so connected! When living I get ideas, inputs, a material to write about. I mean real living, which is so much more than just existing. Living is to see people, to do the things you really want to do - no matter what! To live is to give your boss the finger and see what happens.

I love to experiment with life and all it contains, and when the society and its rules do not allow me to go further, I use to go just a bit further. I live. Then, when the wall I just hit is too hard, too thick, and too massive - then I pick up a piece of paper and a pen... to go even further.

Does Santa have to be good?

A space for writers

Every Thursday evening I am attending a meeting for writers. It is a good meeting where I get constructive feedback on my writing. I joined just a couple of weeks ago. We are different people from different backgrounds, cultures, ages, sexes and workplaces. However, we have all one thing in common: the interest in writing. We write something every week; it might be a poem, a chapter from a book, a short story or just anything written by ourselves. Then we bring it with us at Thursday evenings to read for the group. Questions get answers. Does this bring the story forward? Is this piece clear enough? Does the dialogue contain essential stuff? Are the characters believable? The main thing we work with is storytelling, but sometimes we also help each other out with grammar and spelling. I think it is a great space for writers!

The Masterpiece of my life - and a Cappuccino

I have been writing since I learned how to spell. So far, I have written a diary, novels and poems. Right now, I am working on my masterpiece. It is a story about my life, and it contains about 48 000 words. The story is already there, but I have to fix the grammar, spelling and answer yes at all the questions mentioned above. Deadline is the 31 December 2007. I wrote the entire story in Swedish, so I cannot use the writing group for support, which is a big disability. I have actually to get myself a publisher's reader and pay big money for something the group might had been able to help me with, if it would be written in English. I am still writing small stuff to work on within the group. I have written a Christmas story about a Swedish Christmas, and it we published it a week ago! We made an anthology named Cappuccino, and this is the first time ever I got myself published. It feels great, and I already made some money selling the anthology!

Does Santa have to be good?

The last two things I have to do this year are to finish my masterpiece and then write another Christmas story in English. The last group meeting for this year will be Thursday next week, and we decided that everybody would write about Christmas. So now, the question is... what do I write? I already wrote a nice story about Christmas, so now it has to be something else. One of several interesting questions is; does Santa always have to be good? Have you ever thought that maybe, just maybe, Santa is a drunken old man who just wants a one-night stand? It could be an interesting view...