Category: Writing Experiences

The Know-It-All Narrator

robertmcloughlinWriting Advice, Writing Experiences

My unfinished novel started out as 50,000 words of notes on a story set in an exclusive five star spa resort. It’s centered around the people who work there, and in particular, the protagonist, a male massage therapist. I then wrote out scenes and chapters without clear character arcs nor plot, and ended up with a jig-saw puzzle of almost 140,000 words. After more work I finished a very rough first draft done with 78,000 words written in first person narrative, from the perspective of the male protagonist.

But now, I have become stuck and stopped writing/editing that draft. I’ve been trying to figure out how I might free up this log jam with my story. Writing it in the first person came relatively easy, as it does to most people writing their first novel. But my story is complicated. I fear that it will be misjudged by the reader, as it is full of ethical dilemmas.  I also have a large number of characters, which might confuse readers as to who’s who. I wasn’t happy at all with my draft and felt that I had hit a wall and didn’t know how to adequately tell the story.

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Writer’s Block

robertmcloughlinWriting Advice, Writing Experiences

This article could be more accurately titled ‘Writers Not Writing’. Writer’s block sounds like some sort of external agency which is standing at the door prohibiting writers from putting words on paper. Because I think I may have it, I’d like to explore what writers block really is, for my own benefit and that of others as well. Interestingly enough, the term ‘writer’s block’ was first introduced in the 1940s by a psychiatrist named Edmund Bergler. For 20 yrs. he studied writers who suffered from ‘neurotic inhibitions of productivity’. I love that label.

Apparently, under stress, a human brain will shift control from the cerebral cortex to the limbic system. The limbic system directs the instinctual processes of the ‘fight or flight’ response. The limited input from the cerebral cortex hinders a person’s creative processes. The person is often unaware of the change, which may lead them to believe they are creatively ‘blocked’.

Blocked writers may have an increased aversion to solitude. Which is a major problem, since writing usually requires time alone. Author Phyliss Kestenbaum found that she needed to write in order to be aware of emotions. But when she fell out of touch with her own emotions, she couldn’t write.  (more…)

Writing Flash Fiction

robertmcloughlinWriting Advice, Writing Experiences

So I belong to a writing group which meets once a week at a local library. We show up, share some small talk, then the leader provides several writing prompts. We choose from among the prompts and then write for 20 minutes. Each of us then reads aloud what we’ve written. The group members give a bit of positive feedback. Then we repeat the process, but only write for 10 minutes the second time around. The prompts could be single words, a single sentence, or physical objects or images.

Many writing groups and writing classes follow a similar format. What we end up with usually is 200 to 500 words of a short story. This is the average length of a ‘Flash Fiction’ short story. Though some people say a flash fiction story can extend up to 1,000 words. (Whereas normal short stories might run all the way up to 25,000 words in length).

I have been attending basic writing groups and creative writing classes off and on for some time now. What I do, as well as many other writers, is to let the prompt stir up a memory from our own lives. Then we either write out our experience as an autobiographical piece, or we use the memory to create a new fictional story. Usually about a single experience, place, or person. (more…)

Is it Possible to Live a Book?

robertmcloughlinWriting Experiences

So I was thinking about books. About how one goes about writing a book. Themes, a beginning, middle and an ending. How an idea can expand, twist, and surprise. About plots, inciting incidents, pinch points, and tension. But writing a book can be hard. Easy to think of a story, difficult to translate it into the written word.

A person though, instead of writing a book, could read one, and we do. From the safety of a chair in our own homes, we read. If the book is good, we forget that we are reading a story by some author, and find ourselves immersed in a fictional world, living it in our own minds.

Then I thought, is it possible to live a book? That with books you may get three choices, to write one, to read one, or to live one. A few gifted people, get to do all three. But they are rare.
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Learning by Watching

robertmcloughlinWriting Advice, Writing Experiences

Years ago I was with a friend. We’d traveled to Oberlin College in Ohio to listen to a storyteller perform on stage there. We’d never seen him, but he came highly recommended. As we sat in the auditorium, a janitor came out and set a chair in the center of the stage. Then he returned with a cushion and a lamp. He plugged the lamp in and turned it on and off a few times, testing it. As he was bent over he looked out at us and gave a little wave. A few people laughed. He told us that no one ever tells him anything and he wondered why we were there. Someone called out politely that there was a storyteller who was going to perform, hopefully soon. He looked at a few people in the front row and mumbled that his father used to be a good storyteller. That when he himself was growing up, for better or worse, he was the cause of his father having stories to tell. He then apologized and said he’d be moving on as soon as the show was ready to go on. He said, ‘But there was this one time when my parents had a big party at their home and he’d ended up trapped on top of the roof’. We were five minutes into his story before we all realized that he was the story teller. (more…)