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We don't always talk about the same thing when we talk about writing. When people tell me that they write, and indeed regularly, I never have a clue what they're talking about. https://thebudafokiamended.wordpress.com/2020/10/14/what-is-writing-anyway/
We don't always talk about the same thing when we talk about writing. Creative writing workshops always assume plot and characters like that's the garden variety. But when people tell me that they write, and indeed regularly, I never have a clue what they're talking about.
Are they journaling? Working on an idea for prose or poetry? Free-associating and doodling?
It's probably a bit of everything. But the fact remains that writing process is a taxonomy, not a species. I might be at an airport turned strange with emptiness and find myself in observing things and recording their resonations.
The night before I might have been writing a poem entitled 'lonely man eating broccoli,' because that's the time of day when you realize there's no face left to lose in a situation and you might as well laugh with yourself.
Note even the descriptive modes I ended up using for these two examples are dissimilar and speak to different aesthetic faculties.
It's not even enough to say there are as many writing processes as there are people: we all have multiple existential and emotional needs and we respond to them writing from different stimuli using different voices.
The void is a big place and doesn't always call from the same region.
You might say this falls into the old "waiting on the Muse" trap and doesn't apply to long-form writing. True, for that you need a practice and a timetable. And long-form is like going to the kitchen only the fridge is stocked with research and references.
But I think a practice isn't a process -- if you crank out a thousand of Stephen King's words a day that's no good -- and to form a practice you need to at least have a lead on when the Muse shows up. Consider people write books procrastinating from writing other books.
Naturally this post offers no advice, being against advice and for beauty and meaning. But figure out a practice and let me know.
This thread can be read here: https://thebudafokiamended.wordpress.com/2020/10/14/what-is-writing-anyway/
